The first memorial services for the 19 children and two teachers killed in a mass shooting at their elementary school in Uvalde began on Monday, a day after Joe Biden visited the small south Texas city and was urged by residents to take action on gun safety laws.
Returning to Washington on Monday morning, the US president, wearing a black suit, talked about the “palpable” pain in Uvalde.
Asked by a reporter on the south lawn outside the White House whether he felt more motivated to act on guns now, Biden said: “I’ve been pretty motivated all along. The folks who were victimized, their families … the pain is palpable. I think a lot of it is unnecessary. I’m going to continue to push.”
Republicans in the US Senate have blocked meaningful federal legislation on gun control for many years. Biden said he had not been negotiating with Republicans in the current round of talks underway on Capitol Hill, but he added that “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”
US vice-president Kamala Harris called on Saturday for a US assault rifle ban, as she attended the final funeral for victims killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, just over two weeks ago, where an assault rifle was used in a racist attack at a supermarket in a majority Black neighborhood.
High capacity, semi-automatic military-style assault rifles were used in both the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings, both bought legally.
Biden said on Monday that such weapons made no sense in the hands of the general public.
“There’s only one reason for something that can fire 100 shots … there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self protection, hunting.”
In Uvalde, relatives, school mates and friends of Amerie Jo Garza, who turned 10 on 10 May, just two weeks before she was gunned down, will gather on Monday at the funeral home directly across the street from Robb elementary school where the massacre happened last Tuesday.
Terrified children had fled to the Hillcrest Memorial funeral home a few yards away as the gunman wreaked carnage at the school, also killing two teachers, and now Amerie Jo and more of the dead are there in caskets, waiting to be laid to rest in the town devastated by a senseless atrocity.
Amerie Jo Garza will be buried on Tuesday, one week after the shooting, with a service at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in Uvalde, where the US president and first lady Jill Biden attended a service during their visit on Sunday, before meeting with bereaved families, survivors and first responders.
Also on Monday, at another funeral home, there is a wake for Maite Rodriguez, also 10, with her funeral also scheduled for Tuesday. Her obituary said she dreamt of becoming a marine biologist, with a picture of a dolphin and the girl’s smiling face.
Many other funerals will follow in a sickening series over several weeks, as the 21 victims in a place with a population of less than 16,000 are mourned and the funeral homes struggle to cope.
Even as the city is in shock, parents are demanding safety for their children from gun violence – shouting out as much to Biden and Texas governor Greg Abbott on Sunday.
One onlooker during Biden’s visit to Uvalde shouted out: “Our children do not deserve this”, and another called out “do something”, to which he responded, “we will”, in his only public comments on Sunday.
Amerie Jo’s family described her as a “sassy little diva”. Her father, Alfred Garza, criticized inaction on gun safety laws, which allowed an 18-year-old local man legally to buy assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that he used to perpetrate the killings last week.
“We should have more restrictions, especially if these kids [the gunmen] are not in their right state of mind and all they want to do is just hurt people, especially innocent children going to school,” Garza said.
As well as demands for gun safety, agonized questions continue to pile up over why local armed police waited for more than an hour outside the classroom where the teenage gunman was killing children inside, seemingly violating state policy.
Garza said his daughter had received a cellphone for her birthday and used it to dial the 911 emergency number as the shooting unfolded in her classroom. But the series of calls made by children and adults at the school were in vain.
The US Department of Justice is now going to review the police response. Federal agents from border patrol entered the classroom and shot dead the gunman, Salvador Ramos, an estimated 80 minutes after he entered the school and locked himself inside with his victims.
Javier Cazares had raced to Robb elementary, his daughter’s school, when he heard there was a shooting, leaving his truck running with the door open as he ran into the school yard. He is a gun owner but, in his rush in the emergency, he didn’t have it with him.
He recounted how he spent the next 35 to 45 excruciating minutes scanning the children fleeing school for his nine-year-old “firecracker” daughter, Jacklyn.
All the while, he yearned to run in himself – and grew increasingly agitated, along with other parents, that the police weren’t doing more to stop the gunman.
“A lot of us were arguing with the police, ‘You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs,’” said Cazares, an Army veteran. “We were ready to go to work and rush in.”
Uvalde is a predominantly Latino community that sits among vegetable fields halfway between San Antonio and the US-Mexico border.
The tragedy represents the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in December 2012, when 26 people were killed at the elementary school.
