President Joe Biden has called for tougher gun controls and asked why the US is “willing to live with this carnage” after a teenage gunman murdered at least 19 children and two adults in the country’s deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade.
The suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, charged into the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles (130km) west of San Antonio, at 11.30am on Tuesday, shortly after shooting his grandmother, who survived.
Wearing body armour and carrying two assault rifles reportedly bought on his 18th birthday, he went from classroom to classroom, officials said, in the worst shooting at a US school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut in 2012.
A visibly shaken Biden later urged Americans to resist the powerful gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms laws. Flags will be flown at half-mast until sunset on Saturday in observance of the tragedy, he said.
“As a nation, we have to ask, ‘When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’” Biden said. “When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done? Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” He was “sick and tired of it”, he said, adding: “We have to act.”
The attack came 10 days after a deadly racist rampage at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that claimed 10 lives in a predominantly Black neighbourhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old who they said opened fire with an assault-style rifle.
Repeated mass shootings in the US have often led to public protests and passionate calls for stricter background checks on gun sales and controls that are common in other countries, but almost none have overcome strong Republican-led resistance.
Recent attempts in Congress to expand background checks on firearms purchases failed to get past the Senate, where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome objections from a filibuster.
US media outlets identified four child victims of the shooting, all aged between eight and 10, after speaking to their families, and both adults, who were teachers at the school. Robb elementary has about 600 pupils, aged mostly between seven and 10.
It was not immediately clear how many people had been wounded. The University hospital in San Antonio said it had received two patients from the shooting, a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl, both in critical condition, while Uvalde memorial hospital said 15 students were being treated in its emergency room.
Hours after the attack, distraught families were still awaiting word on whether their children had survived. Outside the civic centre in Uvalde – whose 16,000 residents, according to census data, are about 80% Hispanic or Latino – the silence was broken repeatedly by screams and wailing.
“My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent. “We’re a small community, and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.” The school was counting down to the end of term with a series of themed days, with children asked to come on Tuesday dressed as “Footloose and Fancy”.
Adolfo Cruz, 69, said he drove to the school after receiving a terrifying phone call from his daughter. He was waiting for news of his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Eliajha Cruz Torres, and it was the heaviest moment of his life, he said.
In strong international reactions to the shooting, Pope Francis said he was “heartbroken”, adding: “It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons.” Emmanuel Macron said the French people shared Americans’ shock and grief at the “cowardly” shooting, while Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he was “deeply saddened by the news of the murder of innocent children”.
The suspect’s motive was not immediately clear but authorities said he appeared to have acted alone. Police reportedly saw him emerge from a crashed car outside the school building but despite an exchange of gunfire could not prevent him entering.
Two local police officers were injured in the exchange, authorities said. Teams of Border Patrol agents, including 10 to 15 members of a Swat-like tactical and counterterrorism unit, rushed to the school, Jason Owens, a Border Patrol official, said.
One agent who was working nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman who was behind a barricade, a law enforcement source told the Associated Press.
A state senator, Roland Gutierrez, who said he had been briefed by state police, said Ramos had hinted on social media an attack could be coming, suggesting “kids should watch out” and that he had bought two “assault weapons” after turning 18.
Investigators believe Ramos posted photos on Instagram of two guns he used in the shooting, and they were examining whether he made statements online alluding to the attack in the hours before the assault, a law enforcement official said.
Firearms became the leading cause of death for US children and adolescents in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, according to a University of Michigan research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.
The tragedy was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. In 2018, a gunman shot dead 10 people at Santa Fe high school. A year earlier, a gunman at a Texas church killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service, and in 2019 another killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanics at a Walmart supermarket.
The Uvalde shooting came days before the National Rifle Association’s annual convention was due to begin in Houston. The state governor, Greg Abbott, and both of its senators were among elected Republican officials scheduled to speak at a leadership forum sponsored by the NRA’s lobbying arm on Friday.
