On Tuesday, Uvalde, Texas was the scene of a horrific school shooting that left twenty-one people dead. The shooting took place at Robb Elementary School. Some of the youngest victims were as young as eight years old. Two teachers perished in the massacre as well.
Investigators are still piecing together any motivation that the shooter, who was identified as an eighteen year old male that may have attended Robb as a child, would have to carry out such violence at the school. Currently, investigators have released that the individual shot his grandmother in the face prior to taking a vehicle to the school. The shooter crashed the truck, then walked onto campus, a video has revealed. Some hold that the shooter may have been chased by the police after injuring his grandmother, but this information has not been confirmed.
While the police are still looking into the incident, the city of Uvalde is left to pick up the pieces.
At the same time, a number of Democratic lawmakers took to the media to decry the shooting and call for more gun control laws. One Texas Congressman, Ruben Gallego, hurled profanity at a tweet posted by Republican Senator Ted Cruz relating that Senator Cruz sent his thoughts and prayers to the families in Uvalde. Others would join in, mocking Republicans who had also tweeted out condolences.
President Joe Biden spoke on Tuesday evening regarding the mass shooting. Biden began by relating his own personal tragedy in the loss of his son Beau and his daughter Naomi. Biden said: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There’s a hollowness in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it, never able to get out. Suffocating. It’s never quite the same.”
While most viewing the speech appreciated the empathy President Biden expressed, things seemed to sour quickly. The president quickly changed the topic of the speech to a call for stricter gun control laws. “As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s Name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When will we do what we know in our gut what needs to be done? We have to act. Don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”
President Biden wasn’t the only leading Democrat to almost immediately call for improved gun control laws. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy all spoke out on enacting stricter gun laws.
Speaker Pelosi said that the Senate must pass a bill that House Democrats passed in 2021 related to supposed loopholes that may allow individuals to legally purchase a gun. Neither of these loopholes applied to the Uvalde shooter, however. One is a loophole in which a person is allowed to purchase a gun at an authorized dealer after seventy-two hours if the background check hasn’t come back from the ATF. This legislation would lengthen that time to twenty days. The second loophole has to do with purchasing guns at a gun show or online.
Again, neither of these situations applied to the Uvalde shooter. He had no criminal record nor was he affiliated with any gang, according to the latest police information release.
Biden as well as Rep. Pelosi cited a need for “commonsense gun laws,” which other Democrats would echo across social media.
Most of the Democratic lawmakers are once again calling for a ban on assault weapons. President Biden even said that deer aren’t running through wooded areas with a kevlar vest.
Biden ended his speech by saying that Congress must “stand up to the gun lobby.” Those Congresspeople on the Republican side of the aisle are seeing people on social media post how much money the National Rifle Association has given to their campaigns. However, these numbers haven’t been substantiated.
