An apparently 18-year-old opened fire in the elementary school.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Uvalde/Washington A shooting spree at a Texas elementary school has killed 18 children and three adults. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday after the attack in the small town of Uvalde near San Antonio. The shooter was also dead. According to initial findings, the attacker was an 18-year-old young man who had been killed by officials.
According to Abbott, two police officers were slightly injured in the exchange of fire. Abbott initially assumed that 14 children and one teacher had been killed. Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez later told CNN, citing law enforcement officials, that the death toll had risen to 18 children and three adults.
US President Joe Biden was shocked by the killing spree. In a short live statement in the White House that evening, he called for stricter gun laws in his country. When he became President, he had hoped not to have to give such a speech again. Losing a child is like losing a piece of your soul, said Biden, who himself lost two of his four children.
As a nation, the US must ask itself when it is going to stand up to the gun lobby. “When are we going to do what we know is right?”. During his trip to Asia, from which he returned in the evening, it became clear that other countries did not experience such events with the same frequency as the USA.
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“Where is our backbone?” asked the US President with regard to the political debate about tougher gun laws. Biden’s wife, First Lady Jill Biden, also commented on the short message service Twitter in the evening: “God, enough,” she writes. She was angry and her heart was broken, the tweet continued.
US Vice President Kamala Harris had also previously called for new political measures. “Enough is enough,” Harris said on Tuesday evening (local time) in Washington. “As a nation, we must have the courage to act.” Measures must be taken to ensure that crimes like this don’t happen again, Harris said – without getting specific. “Our hearts keep getting broken.”
Shooting spree in Buffalo just over a week ago
Shooting sprees, including in schools, occur with sad regularity in the United States. A massacre at an elementary school ten years ago was particularly shocking: In December 2012, a 20-year-old with severe mental health problems in Newtown, Connecticut, first shot his mother. He then went to his elementary school, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and killed 20 school children and six teachers there. He then killed himself. At the time, the act caused a shock across the country and also caused horror beyond the borders of the USA.
Sandy Hook is considered one of the key events in the American debate about tougher gun laws. Biden also referred to Sandy Hook in his speech – at the time he was Vice President Barack Obama. Biden said more than 900 other schools have died from gun violence since that event.
Just over a week ago, a gunman with an assault rifle opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing ten people and injuring three others. He was arrested at the scene of the crime. According to investigators, the act was racially motivated – 11 of the 13 victims were black. Buffalo has a mostly black population.
US Senator Chris Murphy reacted in horror to the massacre and addressed moving words to his Senate colleagues. “What are we doing?” asked the Democrat on Tuesday afternoon (local time) in the US Congress. “Why do you spend so much time running for the United States Senate? Why bother getting this job (…) when your answer is that while this slaughter increases and our children run for their lives, we do nothing,” he asked, clearly struggling. “Why are we here?”
“Work with us to find a way to pass legislation that makes this less likely,” the Democrat said. “I know that my Republican colleagues will not agree with everything I advocate, but we can find common ground.” Congress, the US parliament, is responsible for tightening gun laws. Many Republicans oppose such a move. The gun lobby is very powerful in the US.
More than 120 gun deaths a day
Last year, the FBI counted 61 gun shootings in the United States. The FBI announced on Monday evening (local time) in Washington that this was more than 50 percent more than in the previous year. The number has doubled since 2017. In 2021, 103 people were killed and 140 injured in rampages.
That, too, is an increase of almost 50 percent compared to 2020. According to the information, 60 of the 61 shooters were men. The FBI uses a strict definition for the count: it only includes cases in which a perpetrator shoots at people in public in order to kill them. Classic criminal cases involving armed violence or shootings among gang members are ignored.
The level of gun violence overall is far greater in the United States. Fatal incidents involving firearms, which are readily available there, occur regularly. In its most recent statistics from 2020, the health authority CDC recorded a total of 45,222 gun deaths in the USA – more than 120 deaths per day.
More: At least ten people have died in gunfire in upstate New York. The perpetrator was arrested and charged.