Pictured above – President Biden on the School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas – Wife Jill standing next to him.
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Nineteen children and two teachers have died in a shooting after a gunman opened fire at a primary school in Texas.
The attack unfolded at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a small Hill Country town with a population of just more than 16,000, late on Tuesday morning.
The 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, reportedly bought two rifles legally just days after his birthday last week, it has emerged.
Investigators said the suspect had a handgun, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines.
The weapon’s popularity has been growing since 2004, when a ban on federal assault weapons in the US expired.
One of out of every five firearms purchased in the US today is an AR-style rifle, according to estimates by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a national trade association for the firearm industry.
Follow the latest updates on the Uvalde mass shooting
The gun is said to be desirable among Americans because of its versatility, with the ability to add scopes and change the length and size of the barrel.
The semi-automatic weapon fires one round for each pull of the trigger.
The AR-15 was developed in the late 1950s as a civilian weapon by a former Marine working for a small California start-up company called ArmaLite.
By October 2021, the United States had more than 20 million AR-15-style rifles legally in circulation, the NSSF told ABC News.
An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle or variant has reportedly been used in multiple mass shootings in recent years, including the Sandy Hook, San Bernadino and Las Vegas shootings.
On Tuesday, the suspect first shot his own grandmother, who survived, authorities said.
He then fled that scene and crashed his car near Robb Elementary School where he launched the bloody rampage that ended when he was killed, apparently shot by police.
Police saw the gunman, clad in body armour, emerge from the crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and “engaged” the suspect but he managed to charge into the building and open fire, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN.
Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia, who was in her forties, have been named by their families as the two teachers killed in the attack on Robb Elementary School.
The identities of the 19 child victims are also emerging. Uziyah Garcia, 9, Amerie Jo Garza, Makenna Lee Elrod, Xavier Javier Lopez, Jose Flores, Navaeh Brown, Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez and Ellie Lugo, all aged 10 are among those named so far.
This latest attack has echoes of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting which saw 2 killed at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
On 14 December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School.
He shot his way into the locked school where he killed 20 first graders and six educators with an AR-15-type rifle purchased legally by his mother. He then killed himself before police arrived.
In February, the families of nine Sandy Hook victims reached a $73 million settlement in a lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used in the shooting.
The case against Remington, filed in 2015, was closely watched by gun control advocates, gun rights supporters and manufacturers because of its potential to provide a road map for victims of other shootings to sue firearm makers.
The families and a survivor argued the company should have never sold such a dangerous weapon to the public.
They’ve said their focus is on preventing future mass shootings by forcing gun companies to be more responsible with their products and how they market them.
On 14 February 2018 a gunman similarly used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 14 children and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, a visibly shaken president Joe Biden urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms safety laws.
Mr Biden ordered flags flown at half-staff daily until sunset on Saturday in observance of the tragedy.
“As a nation, we have to ask, ‘When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’,” the leader said on national television, suggesting reinstating a US ban on assault-style weapons and other “common sense gun laws.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
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Remarks by President Biden on the School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas
MAY 24, 2022•SPEECHES AND REMARKS
Roosevelt Room
8:41 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, fellow Americans.
I had hoped, when I became President, I would not have to do this again.
Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives.
There’s a lot we don’t know yet, but there’s a lot we do know.
There are parents who will never see their child again, never have them jump in bed and cuddle with them. Parents who will never be the same.
To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There’s a hollowness in your chest, and you feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. It’s suffocating. And it’s never quite the same.
And it’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.
Scripture says — Jill and I have talked about this in different contexts, in other contexts: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” So many crushed spirits.
So, tonight, I ask the nation to pray for them, to give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel right now.
As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?
It’s been 340- — 3,448 days — 10 years since I stood up at a high school in Connecticut — a grade school in Connecticut, where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Since then, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfires reported on school grounds.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Santa Fe High School in Texas. Oxford High School in Michigan. The list goes on and on.
And the list grows when it includes mass shootings at places like movie theaters, houses of worship, and, as we saw just 10 days ago, at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.
I spent my career as a senator and as Vice President working to pass commonsense gun laws. We can’t and won’t prevent every tragedy. But we know they work and have a positive impact. When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.
The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.
What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone?
Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick.
And the gun manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons which make them the most and largest profit.
For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.
Here’s what else I know: Most Americans support commonsense laws — commonsense gun laws.
I just got off my trip from Asia, meeting with Asian leaders, and I learned of this while I was on the aircraft. And what struck me on that 17-hour flight — what struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world.
Why? They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency that they happen in America. Why?
Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?
It’s time to turn this pain into action.
For every parent, for every citizen in this country, we have to make it clear to every elected official in this country: It’s time to act.
It’s time — for those who obstruct or delay or block the commonsense gun laws, we need to let you know that we will not forget.
We can do so much more. We have to do more.
Our prayer tonight is for those parents, lying in bed and trying to figure out, “Will I be able to sleep again? What do I say to my other children? What happens tomorrow?”
May God bless the loss of innocent life on this sad day. And may the Lord be near the brokenhearted and save those crushed in spirit, because they’re going to need a lot of help and a lot of our prayers.
God love you.
8:48 P.M. EDT
