The U.S. is as soon as once more reeling from a surprising act of violence in an elementary school — an establishment the place the most harmless are presupposed to really feel secure.
Nearly 10 years after the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, certainly one of the most horrific mass shootings in U.S. historical past, an 18-year-old gunman opened fireplace at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday, killing no less than 19 college students and two lecturers, authorities mentioned.
The killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a city about 85 miles west of San Antonio, recall the agony of different tragedies, akin to the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
But the violence stirs particularly painful recollections of Dec. 14, 2012, the day a 20-year-old gunman killed 20 youngsters and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In a grim parallel, two senior legislation enforcement officers informed NBC News they had been investigating whether or not the Texas suspect shot his grandmother earlier than the incident. The Newtown gunman shot and killed his mom earlier than he drove to Sandy Hook.
Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group based by the dad and mom of victims, reacted to the Texas news on Twitter: “We are devastated about reports that multiple people are dead, including children.
“Our hearts are with the households and group as this tragic story unfolds,” the organization added.
The tweet was accompanied by a hashtag: #EndGunViolence.
Democratic politicians and gun control advocates expressed their shock over the Uvalde killings and renewed their calls for legislative action.
“It has been almost a decade since Sandy Hook and gun security laws has been repeatedly blocked,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., tweeted. “Unconscionable.”
President Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time of the Newtown killings, addressed the nation Tuesday evening and invoked the Sandy Hook shooting.
“It’s been 3,448 days, 10 years, since I stood up at a grade school in Connecticut, the place one other gunman massacred 26 folks, together with 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” Biden said. “Since then, there have been over 900 incidents the place gunfire was reported on school grounds.”
Fred Guttenberg, a gun control advocate whose daughter, Jamie, was killed in the Parkland shooting, fought back tears in a live interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday, expressing his condolences to the parents of the children killed in Uvalde.
“Their world is spinning,” Guttenberg said, describing them as people “who proper now must suppose, ‘How am I going to plan a funeral?’ Who proper now must suppose, ‘What form of casket?’ Who proper now must suppose, ‘All I did was ship them to school.'”