Arthur Greene
One teacher and 18 children, between five and 11, were shot dead by an 18-year-old gunman in an elementary school in Texas, US on Tuesday.
The shooter, named as Salvador Ramos, was shot dead by responding police officers.
Ramos is believed to have killed his grandmother before entering the school, located in the city of Uvalde, armed with a rifle and a handgun.
The death toll of the mass shooting could still rise, as a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl remain in critical condition at a hospital in San Antonio.
According to Uvalde Memorial Hospital, 13 children had been taken to hospital “via ambulances or buses.”
Two responding officers were also reportedly injured in the shooting but are not in a critical condition.
The news was announced later on Tuesday by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who said Ramos “shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher”.
The shooting comes just over a week after 10 people were shot dead in a racist attack targeting black people in a supermarket in New York.
Tuesday’s attack also bares a tragic resemblance to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, in which 20 children and six adults were shot dead by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
Governor Abbott described the shooting as incomprensible, but America continues to be the easiest country in the world to obtain a firearm – and gun crime is on the rise.
In 2020, shootings overtook car crashes to become the leading cause of death among the country’s children and teenagers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Abbott, a strong gun rights advocate, came in for blistering criticism. In 2015 he tweeted: “I’m EMBARRASSED: Texas #2 in the nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let’s pick up the pace Texans.”
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s shooting, Senator Chris Murphy stood in front of his colleagues across the country in Washington DC and pleaded with them to pass gun control legislation.
“These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country. Nowhere else do kids go to school and think they might be shot that day.”
Image source: @nytimes
