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      DoJ launches investigation into police response to Uvalde school shooting

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      DoJ launches investigation into police response to Uvalde school shootingInquiry comes amid anger over why officers waited over an hour outside the classroom where the gunman killed 21 people The US government on Sunday announced a federal investigation into the police response to the mass shooting at a Texas school five days ago as anger mounted over why armed officers waited more than one hour in the hall outside the classroom where the gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and wounded others.The US Department of Justice said it will conduct a “critical incident review” of the law enforcement action in the small south Texas city of Uvalde last Tuesday.“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” DoJ spokesperson Anthony Coley said.He noted that the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, had requested the review.At the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, the U.S. Department of Justice will conduct a Critical Incident Review of the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. Read more about it here. https://t.co/ELK53ML6Yk— Anthony Coley (@AnthonyColeyDOJ) May 29, 2022
      Uvalde school district police chief Pedro Arredondo, who was in command of the incident response, in which state officials said failing to storm into the classroom where the gunman was barricaded was “the wrong decision”, remained out of sight and under police protection on Sunday.Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said that errors in the response to the school shooting may have contributed to more deaths, and he had spoken with the mother of one child who had died from a single gunshot.“The first responder that they eventually talked to said that their child likely bled out,” Gutierrez told CNN on Sunday morning. “In that span of 30 or 40 minutes extra, that little girl might have lived.”“So many things went wrong, here,” he added, although he said responsibility should not be on one police officer.“At the end of the day, everybody failed, we failed these children,” he said, including lawmakers failing to pass stricter gun safety laws.The gunman who caused carnage at Robb elementary school was local 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who had reportedly made violent threats on social media and boasted about guns.He legally bought the assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition he took into the school.During the time that he had locked and barricaded himself into a classroom with the children and their teachers, one child made at least six calls to the 911 emergency number to plead for help from police, even as officers were right outside.Gutierrez said he had questions over the official timeline of events, including which agency was in charge of the response. Ultimately, it was federal agents from border patrol, not Uvalde’s school police department or the separate city police force that has a part-time tactical Swat team, that confronted the gunman and killed him.This appeared to be against state protocols to “confront the attacker”rapidly.Criticism of the law enforcement response came from both sides of the political divide. Texas Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal, told CNN that “the fact that it took border patrol an hour later to come in and actually do the job for the police is pretty embarrassing.”“It does seem clear protocols weren’t followed,” Crenshaw added. “So, let’s let the investigation play out, but it’s hard not to see how someone doesn’t get fired for this, for these very, very bad calls.”On Friday, Steven McCraw, head of the Texas department of public safety, admitted that the delay in storming the classroom had been “the wrong decision”. Lydia Torres, a neighbor of Arredondo, told the New York Post: “Pete [Pedro] Arredondo is a coward. He didn’t do his job. He failed the children. He is hiding in his home, requesting the PD [police department] patrol the area and guard his home day and night. He should come out and speak up.”Florida congresswoman and former Orlando police chief Val Demings demanded a “complete investigation”, telling CBS “we have more questions than answers.” TopicsTexas school shootingUS politicsGun crimenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Do something!’: Biden visits Uvalde after mass shooting as onlookers urge him to take action

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      ‘Do something!’: Biden visits Uvalde after mass shooting as onlookers urge him to take action President and first lady seek to comfort community as DoJ launches investigation into police response to school shootingJoe Biden on Sunday visited Uvalde, Texas, seeking to comfort a community devastated by the latest American mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 19 elementary school children and two teachers.The visit marked the second presidential visit related to a massacre within two weeks following a racist attack in Buffalo, New York, as Democrats in Washington offered tentative hope of bipartisan gun reform legislation in Congress.Onlookers cheered Biden but also called out to the Democratic president and visiting Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott about taking action to make America safer for their children.The US president and First Lady Jill Biden, both wearing black, paid their respects at a makeshift memorial site outside the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, laying a bouquet of white flowers amid a mass of candles, flowers, and photographs of the victims.Biden could be seen reaching out to touch the pictures of the children and at one pointed wiped tears from his eyes as he made his way slowly through the memorial.Abbott was close by and since last Tuesday’s shooting has talked about greater security for schools, but not about restrictions on guns, drawing heckling on Sunday. “We need help, Governor Abbott,” shouted one onlooker. “Shame on you, Abbott,” shouted another.Uvalde resident Ben Gonzalez, 35, called out to the politicians and said after that he wanted to see change on several issues, including more gun laws, more resources for mental health and for schools and that it was up to state and federal lawmakers to act.“At a certain point of time it’s going to be on us, because we vote these people in to represent us and they are not representing us and it’s heartbreaking because things like this happen. Something needs to be done, we need change, we need help and my biggest fear is that nothing is going to change, and six months from now Uvalde is just going to be Uvalde, it’s just going to be history and nothing will have changed,” he told CNN.The Bidens walked past the school before being whisked away in the presidential motorcade to attend mass at the local Catholic church, without making public comment.After the service the Bidens left the church and someone in the crowd yelled: “Do something!”The president called back: “We will.”Biden was due to join mourners after the service and, later, first responders, as the US justice department announced it would conduct a critical incident review of the law enforcement response to the shooting, after it emerged that local police had waited for at least an hour outside the classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself and opened fire.On Saturday in a speech in Delaware Biden lamented “too much violence, too much fear, too much grief” in repeated gun violence across America, which he called “acts of evil”. 0The Texas visit came as senators in Washington DC, offered cautious optimism over a legislative deal on a package of small-scale gun safety measures. On Sunday, Democratic US Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said ongoing talks between Senate Democrats and Republicans would involve compromises on both sides of the political aisle.“I think there is something dying inside the soul of this country when we refuse to act at a national level, shooting after shooting,” Murphy told CBS News.“And I do think there is an opportunity right now to pass something significant. I’ve seen more Republican interest in coming to the table and talking this time than at any moment since Sandy Hook,” he said, referring to the devastating mass shooting in an elementary school in his state almost 10 years ago that claimed 26 lives.A small group of US senators began negotiations earlier in the week with a number of control measures reportedly on the table. These include a national expansion of background checks for firearms purchases and the adoption of so-called red flag laws, which allow authorities to order the removal or restriction of weapons from a person deemed to be a public safety risk.But Murphy, who is joined at the negotiating table by a handful of senior Republican senators, including John Cornyn from Texas and Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, made clear that a number of key proposals endorsed by gun control advocates were unlikely to form part of any legislative package. These included a national ban on assault rifle purchases or limits to magazine capacity.Vice-President Kamala Harris made a fresh call on Saturday for banning military-style assault weapons for the general public, as she attended the last funeral for the 10 victims gunned down in Buffalo, two weeks ago in a racist attack on a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood. Both the alleged gunman in New York and the one who attacked the elementary school in Uvalde last week were 18 year-olds but were legally able to buy the assault rifles and ammunition they used in the attacks.There remain significant hurdles to achieving any major legislative measures, which have continually faltered in the aftermath of mass shootings in recent years.At least 10 Senate Republicans would need to cast a vote in favor of proposed legislation in order to win the 60 votes required for legislative passage, with the chamber split 50-50 between the two parties.This week, the New York Times contacted all 50 Republican senators to gauge their position on gun reform. Only five have so far indicated a willingness to vote for any legislation, highlighting the power the pro-gun lobby holds over the party.In Texas a handful of senior state Republicans joined Democrats in calling on Abbott to convene a special session of the state legislature, who later said: “All options are on the table”.But any reform is still likely to be an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled state, that has passed successive pieces of legislation loosening gun laws after recent mass shootings.On Sunday, Texas Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw knocked down new restrictions when interviewed on CNN.Crenshaw, a former US Navy SEAL, also claimed AR-15-style assault rifles are “more self-defense weapons” than a tool of war.TopicsTexas school shootingJoe BidenUS gun controlUS politicsJill BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stall

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stallNew York governor seeks to ban people under 21 from buying assault rifles, while California governor intends to sign restrictions, including the right to sue gun manufacturers With Republicans stonewalling for years on any significant federal gun safety legislation, some states are now rushing to take steps themselves following large-scale shootings in New York and Texas this month.Democrats in some blue states are making fresh efforts to reinvigorate proposals toward what gun control advocates call “evidence-based policy interventions”.In New Jersey, Democratic governor Phil Murphy singled out four Republican state lawmakers opposing gun safety and accused them of taking “blood money” while urging them to pass a stalled gun control package that included raising the age to 21 for purchases of long guns, such as assault rifles, and removing laws that shield gun makers from civil lawsuits.Among those Murphy named were state senators John DiMaio, co-sponsor of a bill that would eliminate the statutory prohibition against the possession of “hollow point” ammunition; and Ed Durr, sponsor of a bill to remove magazine capacity limits and repeal a “red flag” law prohibiting guns for people deemed to pose “a significant danger of bodily injury”.“In the face of children being slaughtered to the point where the reports indicate these beautiful children were unrecognizable, I say let these folks come out from behind their press releases and their tweets and cast votes before the residents of this great state,” Murphy said.In New York, where the gunman was charged with first degree murder in the deaths of 10 Black customers and employees of a supermarket in Buffalo two weeks ago, state Democratic governor Kathy Hochul said she would seek – at a “minimum” – to ban people under 21 from purchasing AR-15-style assault rifles.Military-style assault rifles were used in Buffalo and last week in the school shooting in Uvalde, south Texas, by 18-year-olds in both tragedies, Hochul pointed out.“That person’s not old enough to buy a legal drink. I don’t want 18-year-olds to have guns. At least not in the state of New York,” she said.Among the measures Hochul enacted by executive order after the Buffalo massacre was a unit within the state’s office of counterterrorism that would focus exclusively on the rise of domestic terrorism and extremism.As the law stands in New York, a person must be 21 or older to obtain a license to purchase a handgun but the state doesn’t require licenses for long guns, such as shotguns or rifles, and someone can own one at 16. Hochul hopes to get the law through this week.In California – which has experienced a string of mass shootings, including one at a church luncheon two weeks ago – Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has called for tougher gun controls to be fast-tracked through the legislature.“California will not stand by as kids across the country are gunned down,” Newsom said last week.“Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America. While the US Senate stands idly by and activist federal judges strike down commonsense gun laws across our nation, California will act with the urgency this crisis demands.”“The Second Amendment [to the US Constitution, on the right to bear arms] is not a suicide pact. We will not let one more day go by without taking action to save lives,” he added.An initial package of bills Newsom has committed to signing include restrictions on advertising of firearms to minors, curbs ghost guns, establish rights of action to limit spread of illegal assault weapons, and the right for governments and victims of gun violence to sue manufacturers and sellers of firearms.However, few Republican-controlled states have followed their lead. Conservative lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Michigan prevented efforts to introduce votes on gun safety legislation, while officials in Texas including the hard-right governor Greg Abbott, have blamed the school massacre there on a gunman with mental health problems, not the fact that he was legally able to buy semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition as soon as he turned 18 earlier this year.“Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period,” Abbott said a day after the Uvalde shooting.At the federal level, a group of bipartisan senators have said they would work through the weekend to reach agreement on steps to limit access to guns, although there are no big moves afoot to ban assault weapons, as Vice-President Kamala Harris called for anew on Saturday, or raise the eligibility age to 21.“It’s inconceivable to me that we have not passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation, especially because since Sandy Hook, we’ve seen even worse slaughter, in Las Vegas, in Orlando,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on ABC on Sunday.Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick Toomey said: “Times change. There’s a possibility that might work this time.”TopicsUS gun controlBuffalo shootingTexas school shootingUS politicsNew YorkTexasCalifornianewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Too much fear, too much grief’: Biden visits Uvalde amid scrutiny of police response to shooting

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      ‘Too much fear, too much grief’: Biden visits Uvalde amid scrutiny of police response to shooting Kamala Harris calls for ban on assault weapons after attending last funeral of those killed in Buffalo attackJoe Biden lamented “too much violence, too much fear, too much grief” after the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where police face intensifying scrutiny for waiting outside the classroom where a teenage gunman with an assault rifle killed 19 children and two teachers.The US president and first lady, Jill Biden, arrived in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday morning, both dressed in black. They visited the informal memorial of flowers and notes that has accumulated outside Robb elementary school, where the carnage took place last Tuesday.Then they will meet families who lost loved ones, and those who survived the gunman’s rampage, followed by first responders, after a relatively long gap between the tragedy in Uvalde and the presidential visit.On Saturday, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, called for a ban on such military-style assault weapons for the general public, while she attended the last funeral of the 10 people killed just two weeks ago in a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, carried out with a similar gun.Kamala Harris calls for assault weapons ban: ‘We are not sitting around waiting’Read moreThe center of Uvalde was busy but hushed on Saturday afternoon as a long line of people lined up quietly in heat approaching 100F, waiting to place flowers and other tributes at the hurriedly-created memorial of crosses set up for those killed five days ago at nearby Robb elementary school.An ambulance was standing by and a state trooper assisted members of the public who came to mourn.But as well as grief there was anger that has been simmering since Tuesday, when local police waited at least an hour, while young children trapped with the gunman repeatedly called 911 and parents outside pleaded with officers to go in, before federal agents arrived and shot the 18-year-old local man dead.The police department specifically assigned to oversee school security in the area, led by Pedro Arredondo, appeared not to have followed state protocols advising that an “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker”.0The head of the Texas department of public safety, Steve McCraw, admitted on Friday afternoon that “of course it was the wrong decision” for local officers to wait to enter the classroom.And Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said he felt “misled” and was livid after several days of conflicting accounts about the law enforcement response.Biden spoke about the tragedy in Uvalde during a commencement speech he gave on Saturday morning at the University of Delaware, his alma mater.“As I speak, those parents are literally preparing to bury their children. In the United States of America. Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,” said Biden and called the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings acts of “evil”.“In the face of such destructive forces, we have to stand stronger. We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of our people, and of our children,” he said.‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?Read moreThe US has received increasing criticism from the international community and gun safety advocates domestically over continual mass shootings and the failure of lawmakers to pass gun control laws that could mitigate them.Biden and fellow Democrats have been repeatedly out-maneuvered in the last decade by Senate Republicans, many of whom are backed by the powerful gun lobby.Harris called on the Congress to act, saying: “We are not sitting around, waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. We know what works on this. It includes – let’s have an assault weapons ban.”In Uvalde, Alfred Garza was among several parents who gathered outside the elementary school after reports that a shooting was under way and witnessed officers delaying a move to storm in. He tried not to get in the way. Other parents begged officers to take action.His daughter Amerie Jo, 10, was among those shot dead before federal agents arrived and killed the gunman, Salvador Ramos.“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it just took too long to get in there and, you know, had they gotten there sooner, and someone would have taken immediate action, we might have more of those children here today, including my daughter,” he told CNN.Warning signs about Ramos had been evident prior to his attack, with reports of threatening posts on social media and aggressive interactions with teenage peers.But he was able legally to arm himself with assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition shortly after he turned 18 this year.His mother, Adriana Martinez, gave a short television interview earlier in the week, saying in Spanish: “I have no words to say. I don’t know what he was thinking,” adding: “He had his reasons for doing what he did. Please don’t judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me.”TopicsTexas school shootingBuffalo shootingUS gun controlJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?

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      ‘We have to act’: can Biden cut through the gridlock on gun control?The president has long fought for restrictions but deep divisions have often left him hamstrung Less than two hours after returning from a five-day trip to Asia, a visit meant to signal American strength, Joe Biden walked slowly into the Roosevelt Room of the White House, visibly shaken, to address one of the nation’s greatest weaknesses.Another bloody mass shooting in America. This time in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, making it the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.It was just 10 days after a gunman had targeted Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people. And just nine days after a gunman opened fire in a Taiwanese church in southern California, leaving one dead and several wounded.“Why?” Biden said, his voice rising in anger. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”Nearly a decade after watching Republicans defeat a gun control package he helped develop as vice-president in response to the shooting at Sandy Hook, Biden’s wrenching search for answers to this uniquely American tragedy continues.He entered the White House with a sweeping plan to address gun violence, but too-narrow margins in Congress to see them enacted. Once again, the president finds himself stuck between a desire to act and the limits of power to do so.Washington’s shame: how previous bids to tighten gun laws have failedRead more“I am sick and tired of it,” Biden said this week. “We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”On Sunday, Biden will travel to Uvalde to honor the lives lost. He will grieve with the community as a father who knows the pain of burying a child. But as the president, it is unclear what he can deliver.Biden said on Wednesday that “the idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war, designed and marketed to kill, is, I think, just wrong,” declaring: “The second amendment is not absolute.”Any hope he had of action from lawmakers on Capitol Hill was seemingly tempered by decades of false starts and failures. He called on Congress to pass “reasonable” gun safety laws and urged the Senate to take a “modest step” by confirming his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).“We’re always looking to do more,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Thursday. “But right now we need the help of Congress.”Encouraged by the White House, Democrats have thrown themselves into the gun control debate anew. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, who was the congressman representing Sandy Hook at the time of the massacre, began talks this week. But they face long odds in drafting a bill that can garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster.Speaking at a gun safety rally on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Murphy acknowledged a feeling of “dejà vu” in the wake of these tragedies, when vows of “never again” are followed by gridlock and inaction. He asked supporters for help building the public case for action, urging a “popular uprising of citizens” to pressure Republicans.Democrats say the discussions will not be open-ended and have vowed to force Republicans to take votes on the issue if no compromise is reached in the coming weeks.“I’m not going to negotiate for ever,” Murphy told reporters after the rally.Hours later, Senate Republicans blocked legislation introduced by Democrats that would have strengthened the federal government’s response to domestic terrorism and white supremacy in response to the racist attack in Buffalo, a stark reminder of the deep divisions between the parties on how to address gun violence in America.The White House pointed to a flurry of executive orders Biden has signed as part of the administration’s “whole of government” response to the nation’s “epidemic of gun violence”. One would strengthen regulations on “ghost guns”, homemade firearms without serial numbers that are increasingly recovered at crime scenes. Another launched a team of strike forces to crack down on illegal firearms trafficking in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and DC.Additionally, they have launched efforts to prevent veteran suicides by firearm, increase community policing and tighten regulations on “stabilizing braces” that have been used in mass shootings.But the steps fall short of Biden’s campaign promises to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and his embrace of a federal gun buyback program to take more weapons off the streets.In the absence of congressional action, gun safety advocates believe Biden can do more with his bully pulpit and his pen.“We need the president to bring this issue to the national level consistently, even when there aren’t mass shooting tragedies rocking the nation,” said Po Murray, chair of Newtown Action Alliance, formed after the Sandy Hook massacre. “He needs to make this issue a daily priority until we start reducing gun deaths and injuries in this country.”Murray is among the advocates urging the White House to establish a federal office of gun violence prevention and issue a national emergency declaration to more forcefully confront the issue. Others have called on Biden to appoint a gun “tsar” or use his executive authority to expand background checks on firearm purchases and reform the ATF.Greg Abbott backs out of NRA appearance amid fury over eventRead moreJohn Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said Biden had been the “strongest gun-sense president in history”. But he is urging the White House to issue an executive order that would clarify the definition of gun sellers so that more would be required to conduct background checks on prospective buyers.During a press briefing this week, Jean-Pierre stressed that this had been a top priority for Biden for much of his political life. “Look, this is a president, as I’ve said already, who has been working on gun violence, comprehensive gun reform, since he was a senator.”But a reporter pushed back: “Isn’t that more of an indictment” that he has been working on this issue for so long and so little has changed?Jean-Pierre replied that Biden had done “more via executive actions than any president in their first year” to combat gun violence, but understands that we need to do more.”“We are angry as well,” she said.Biden’s frustration is borne of decades of experience working on the issue, one of the most divisive in American life. As a senator, he played a key role in passing the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004 when Congress failed to renew it.Years later, when Biden was vice-president, Barack Obama tasked him with the mission of developing a fresh wave of gun control measures in response to Sandy Hook. The team proposed a slew of executive actions that Obama ultimately signed, but a parallel legislative effort failed in the Senate in 2013.Matt Bennett, a vice-president of the Democratic thinktank Third Way, who worked with Biden’s team on gun control legislation after Sandy Hook, said Biden knows his options are limited without Congress.“When he ran the taskforce in 2013, they did their damnedest to find every single thing Obama could do by executive order, but there’s just not that much,” he said. “Trust me, they’re looking under every rock.”Wading too deeply into the legislative debate as talks begin on Capitol Hill could upset the already-fragile negotiations, he added.“Biden understands that this can’t be the ‘Biden bill’ or else it has no hope,” Bennett said.In Uvalde, Biden will once again play the role of first responder to a nation reeling from tragedy. But in the days and weeks that follow, advocates hope the president will seize this moment to relentlessly pursue meaningful policy reform.“He can be savvy but he cannot be complacent,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, a gun violence protection group founded by the former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt that left six people dead, “because we cannot continue this cycle of mourning.”TopicsTexas school shootingJoe BidenUS politicsUS gun controlUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws

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      How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws The powerful lobbying groups spent nearly $5m million last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry itIn Texas, where guns are already a deeply ingrained part of the cultural landscape, a powerful political force is helping to stifle regulations aimed at limiting access to high-powered firearms.The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of America’s most powerful lobbying groups, spending nearly $5m last year to expand gun rights while limiting restrictions on who can have a firearm and how they can carry it.Now, the NRA is again at the center of a heated American debate over guns after an 18-year-old with two rifles he purchased legally walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two adults.That was Tuesday. Today, the NRA will welcome 55,000 members at its annual meeting in Houston, just a few hours from Uvalde. Attendees will browse exhibits of firearms paraphernalia and hear from Republican politicians like Texas senator Ted Cruz, Texas governor Greg Abbott and former US President Donald Trump.A majority of Americans – 54% according to a CBS News poll before the shooting in Uvlade this week – want stricter gun control laws, but that majority is highly partisan. Just 27% of Republicans say the same.Among Texans that margin is even slimmer. In a 2019 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll after mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, just 51% of registered voters in Texas said they wanted stricter gun control laws.The majority of gun owners are responsible with their weapons, says Nicole Golden, the executive director of the state’s only organization advocating for policies to reduce gun violence. Texas Gun Sense was founded in 2007 by survivors of a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and expanded in 2013, after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.Now, Golden’s bipartisan group focuses on finding common ground with gun owners to support initiatives at the state and local level. They work with the Texas Department of Public Safety, for example, on a campaign to promote safe gun storage to keep firearms locked up and away from others.“I don’t think the issue is hopeless,” Golden said. “You have to redefine what success looks like. You can’t give up because I don’t think giving up is an option.”She said that this week, like after other mass shootings, her organization has seen an influx in new interest from Texans. Many gun owners, she says, recognize that America’s epidemic of gun violence needs some kind of change. After a 2018 mass shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, that killed 10 churchgoers, Abbott suggested new regulations including “red flag” laws that would allow courts to take away someone’s guns if they pose a threat to themselves or others.Golden said she was excited to work with the governor on the issue, but it quickly failed to pick up any traction in the state capital.“We watched those things fail, and this time there’s been no interest at all of dealing with safe gun laws,” Golden said. “It can often feel like you’re just beating your head against the wall or shouting into the void.”There is little doubt that Texas has a historical obsession with fire arms dating back to it being a frontier state where white settlers used guns to take land from Indigenous groups and used them to fight the Mexican government, and then the US government when the state seceded during the American civil war.“We have this long tradition of firearms,” said Jerry Patterson, a former Texas land commissioner and NRA member who helped push for concealed carry in the state after a mass shooting at a Luby’s restaurant in 1991.But that tradition isn’t just a Texas-specific phenomenon, says Harel Shapira, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin who studies gun culture in America. He says that from a very young age, gun ownership becomes part of many people’s identity across the country. Families go hunting together. Fathers teach their children to shoot and how to be safe with firearms.“Guns are a source of death, but also a source of [cultural] life in America,” Shapira said. Regulations may address who can purchase or use guns, he said, “but the question of American gun culture is a larger issue.”He said that in recent decades, gun rights have become entrenched as a rightwing political issue. If you want to win as a Republican, he said, you have to embrace pro-gun rhetoric. Plus, that culture of firearms means that when mass shootings create a call to regulate guns, gun owners often have an emotional reaction.“It’s very personal, it’s very visceral, it’s very emotional,” Shapira said. “They see it as an assassination of their character.”That culture has helped build strong support for groups like the NRA in Texas. There are 5 million members nationwide, but the group says that 400,000 of them are in Texas. The NRA did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about its support in the state.Last year, the organization cited financial struggles in an effort to leave its headquarters in New York to reorganize in the more friendly political climate of Texas.That bid at reorganization was part of a bankruptcy suit tied to an effort by New York’s attorney general to put the group out of business, according to the Associated Press. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the NRA laid off dozens of employees while its leaders used the group’s funds as their own piggybank, including a $17m post-employment contract for NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre.Yet those problems, Patterson said, won’t change how the NRA or politicians think about access to firearms in America. He said that in Texas and across the US, primary electoral politics force candidates to take extreme positions on all kinds of issues, like gun rights. Not all gun owners may approve of extreme measures, he said, but the rhetoric that brings primary voters to the polls swings to the right in Republican races.“There are a lot of people on the gun control side that are not as excited about things as they appear to be,” Patterson said. “But they vote for it anyway because the elections are decided in the primary.”The NRA’s recent financial troubles didn’t stop the group from spending $786,052 in the 2020 election cycle. The group has already spent $217,596 in 2022 – paid exclusively to Republican candidates.Three of the five lawmakers that have benefited the most from gun rights groups like the NRA are Texans, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks US political spending. Cruz has received the most – $442,333 since joining the US Congress in 2012. Texas’s other senator, John Cornyn, has received $238,875 during his tenure in the US Senate. Pete Sessions, a congressman from Waco, Texas, has received $202,926 in donations from the NRA and similar groups.Those donations were smaller in 2020, as the organization began facing some of its mostly self-inflicted financial hurdles. Cornyn received $9,900 from the NRA in the last election cycle. Cruz was not up for re-election at that time and did not receive any donations, according to OpenSecrets.Uvalde’s representative in the US House is Tony Gonzales, who said earlier this week that he was not interested in discussing gun policy so soon after 19 children were killed in his district. The NRA donated $4,950 to his campaign in the 2020 election cycle.Abbott, Texas’s governor, is one of the most gun-friendly governors in the US. Even after mass tragedies like in Uvalde, he has signed laws making guns more and more accessible in the state. Last year, after signing a law allowing most Texans to carry a gun without a permit, he bragged that the measure “instilled freedom in the Lone Star State”.He is up for re-election this year. The NRA donated $2,500 to his campaign during his last race in 2018.Much of the rhetoric used by these and other conservatives after mass shootings like in Uvalde rely on a playbook partially developed by the NRA more than two decades ago. Soon after the shooting at Columbine high school in 1999, the NRA was scheduled to host its annual convention in nearby Denver.According to a secret tape released by NPR last year, the group’s leaders met to consider a response, focusing on de-politicizing the tragedy and convincing lawmakers to delay action until the immediate firestorm of bad press had passed. It’s a playbook the group has returned to again and again as more Americans have been killed by gun violence.After so many mass shootings – more than 200 in the US already this year – the responses on both sides of the issue have become predictable, Patterson said. He, like many political observers, doubt any real change will come from the aftermath of the horrors in Uvalde.“We should do that which makes a difference,” Patterson said. “I fear we’re going to do the same shit we did before. It’s the cliches, the bumper stickers, and that’s all that’s going to happen this time.”TopicsNRATexas school shootingUS gun controlUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas school shooting overshadows primaries: Politics Weekly America – podcast

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      The killing of at least 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in the town of Uvalde on Tuesday has reignited the gun control debate in the US. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the chief correspondent for the Washington Post, Dan Balz, about why, after yet another tragedy involving firearms, the Republican party is still unwilling to talk gun reform

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      Texas officials deflect questions on ‘missing hour’ when gunman was in school – latest updates

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      A briefing Thursday afternoon by the Texas Department of Public Safety created more questions than answers about a “missing” hour during which the Uvalde gunman was in the school but not confronted by law enforcement officers.Victor Escalon, the department’s regional director, deflected reporters’ questions about why officers did not attempt to stop the gunman in that time.During the short, and sometimes chaotic briefing, Escalon appeared defensive when challenged about the delay. Parents of victims have expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, and some begged officers to move in.“There’s lot of possibilities,” Escalon said, insisting that investigators needed time to interview officers from multiple jurisdictions who were eventually present.“At the end of the day our job is to report the facts. We don’t have all the answers. We’re not there yet”.But in laying out a preliminary timeline of the shooting, he did indicate that the gunman appeared to have been able to gain entry to the school through an unlocked back door, and that, contrary to earlier reports, there was no armed police officer on duty at the campus when the shooter walked in and began Tuesday’s deadly rampage that killed 19 students and two teachers.“The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon said, adding that officers first on the scene prioritized calling for back up and trying to evacuate students and children. “He did not respond [to officers trying to speak to him],” Escalon said.Escalon ended the briefing by promising to get back to the media when he had more information to give.‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreWe have more details on Joe Garcia, who died of an apparent heart attack two days after the Robb elementary school gunman killed his wife, 46-year-old Irma Garcia, a teacher who was sheltering with her students. Guadalupe “Joe” Garcia – the husband of 46-year-old Irma Garcia, who was shot and killed while sheltering children in her classroom – died two days after the mass killing that shattered his family, a cousin of his wife confirmed on a verified GoFundMe page.The Garcias had been together for more than 30 years. They were high school sweethearts before marrying and having four children, the cousin, Debra Austin, wrote.“I truly believe Joe died of a broken heart and losing the love of his life … was too much to bear,” Austin wrote.The Garcias’ nephew, John Martinez, said via Twitter that the couple’s children – ages 13, 15, 19 and 23 – had now lost both parents.Irma Garcia taught fourth grade at Robb. On her profile on the school’s website, she wrote that she and Joe, 48, enjoyed barbecuing, listening to music, and vacationing at the nearby community of Concan, which sits along Texas’ Frio River.The couple’s first child – one of two boys – was completing boot camp with the Marines, and their second, another son, was attending Texas State University, according to the profile. The two youngest children, both daughters, are a high school sophomore and a seventh grader.Husband of teacher killed in Texas school shooting dies of heart attackRead moreA dispatch from the Guardian’s Dani Anguiano who is reporting from Uvalde: The tears started before anyone even spoke. Inside a Uvalde county building that usually hosts the rodeo in this part of south-west Texas, young children and parents cried and held each other. Together, they waited for a group of pastors to offer some words of comfort for their unfathomable loss.This week in Uvalde began with a mood of celebration. The high school graduation was to be held on Friday – giant senior portraits lined the lawn outside city hall. Younger children were wrapping up the school year as well, attending classroom parties and awards ceremonies. But on Tuesday, life in this largely Latino town was upended when a gunman barricaded himself in an elementary school classroom and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers.With all schools in the district cancelled for the remainder of the year and the town mourning for those it lost, hundreds of people came to a vigil at the Uvalde County Fairplex arena on Wednesday. There, pastors, seated on a stage on the dirt normally reserved for horses, tried to offer solace to their community.“Pray for those children that saw what happened to their friends … pray for each of us as we help them,” said Pastor Tony Grubin, feeling nervous as he addressed the crowd of adults and children, many of them wearing red school shirts. “Evil will not win.”‘Evil will not win’: sorrow and disbelief as Uvalde mourns its childrenRead moreThe AP has more details on Jacklyn Cazares, a nine-year-old girl who was killed in the shooting alongside her cousin, Annabelle Rodriguez:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Jacklyn Cazares hadn’t yet reached her 10th birthday, but she was already a tough-minded “firecracker” always looking to help people in need, her father said. Jacklyn and her second cousin, Annabelle Rodriguez, were especially tight with three other classmates at Robb elementary school.
      “They are all gone now,” Javier Cazares said. “All her little best friends were killed too.”
      Jacklyn would have turned ten on 10 June. Despite her young age, she was equal parts tough-minded and compassionate.
      “She had a voice,” her father said. “She didn’t like bullies, she didn’t like kids being picked on. All in all, full of love. She had a big heart.”More about the victims here: ‘He was just a loving little boy’: the victims of the Texas school shootingRead moreAs criticisms mount over the police response to the massacre, one mother who was outside of the school as the attack was unfolding says that officers handcuffed her after she urged police to enter.Angeli Rose Gomez, who has children in the second and third grade in the school, told the Wall Street Journal she drove 40 miles to the school when she heard there was a shooting and that when she arrived, “The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”She told the paper that after a few minutes of her urging officers to act, federal marshals approached and put her in handcuffs, alleging that she was being arrested for interfering in an active investigation. She said she was released after she talked to Uvalde police officers she personally knew who convinced the marshals to let her go. At that point, she said she entered the school and got her two children. Gomez also told the Journal that after the gunman was killed, she saw police use a Taser on a local father who was approaching a bus to find his child. Gomez described it this way: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}They didn’t do that to the shooter, but they did that to us. That’s how it felt.”A mom of two children at Uvalde was put in handcuffs after urging police and law enforcement to enter the school.Once freed from her cuffs, she jumped the school fence, ran inside and sprinted out with her kids.New from @WSJ: https://t.co/SYdgysw0gF pic.twitter.com/ZCadllw9aT— Megan Menchaca (@meganmmenchaca) May 26, 2022
      Officials have not offered a clear explanation as to why the gunman was in the school for up to an hour before he was stopped and killed, even while officers were on scene. Authorities admitted that police officers had assembled outside the room where the gunman was located, but did not make any attempt to break through the door during that hour. Instead, they decided to pull back and wait until a specialist tactical unit arrived, while evacuating other children and staff from the building. More on the police response here: ‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreBiden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the White House was “disappointed” that Republicans in the Senate blocked the domestic terrorism prevention bill that the Democratic-controlled House last week. .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We need Congress to act. We need Congress to advance commonsense measures that we know will save lives.She later added, “Commonsense gun safety laws work. We know this. They save lives. The public supports this. They are behind this.” A reporter asked whether Biden would be doing anything differently to reflect the urgency of the gun violence crisis, the press secretary responded, “The president has already declared gun violence to be a public health epidemic. This is a president who has been working on gun violence, comprehensive gun reform since he was a senator.” When the reporter followed up and asked whether it was indictment of Biden that he has been involved in the issue for so long and so little has changed, she said, “He understands we need to do more, but Congress also has to act … The president is doing everything that he can to get this done.” The White House is declining to weigh in on the concerns about the Texas law enforcement response to the school shooting. Asked at the briefing whether Joe Biden would call for an investigation into police’s actions at the shooting, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, responded: “The president has the utmost respect for the men and women of law enforcement … We won’t pre-judge the results from here at this time.”The gunman was in the school for up to an hour before he was killed, even while officers were on scene, and officials have not offered a clear explanation of the timeline or what police were doing during that hour. Asked about the NRA convention scheduled to begin in Texas, Jean-Pierre said: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It’s not about the convention. What is inappropriate is that the leadership of the National Rifle Association has proven time and time again that they are contributing to the problem of gun violence, not trying to solve it … [They are] marketing weapons of war to adults. They don’t represent gun owners who know we need to take action. The NRA and their allies have stood in the way of [gun safety measures]. It is shameful. About the response from some Republicans calling for more armed people, the press secretary said, “If more guns were the solution, we’d be the safest country in the world.”Hi all – Sam Levin here, taking over our live coverage: The White House has announced that Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be traveling to Uvalde, Texas on Sunday to “grieve with the community”. Officials did not have further details on the visit, though a press briefing is due to start momentarily. Follow along here for updates. Here are today’s developments so far from Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers:
      Investigators at an afternoon media briefing were unable to say why the gunman was not confronted during a “missing hour” between entering the school and being killed by a SWAT team.
      Parents and other locals expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, with some having begged officers to move in as the massacre was still ongoing.
      However, US Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz said agents “didn’t hesitate” when responding to the shooting. “They came up with a plan. They entered that classroom and they took care of the situation as quickly as they possibly could,” he told CNN.
      Democratic senator Chris Murphy called for a “popular uprising of citizens” to pressure Republicans to support gun laws following the shooting.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he would delay a vote on background checks for weapons buyers while bipartisan talks progressed, but warned Republicans he would move ahead if no deal was reached.
      March for Our Lives, the student-led gun reform activist group set up in the wake of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida, is planning protest events in several US cities on 11 June.
      Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz confronted a British reporter and angrily left an interview after he was asked why school shootings like the one in Uvalde happen so often in the US.
      Before attacking the school, the gunman, named as Salvador Ramos, shot and wounded his grandmother at her home. Neighbors called police when she staggered outside and they saw she had been shot in the face.
      The gunman sent three online messages in the half-hour before the mass shooting, according to Texas governor Greg Abbott. The messages were sent via Facebook and “discovered after the terrible tragedy,” company spokesman Andy Stone said.
      The gunman had legally bought the rifle and a second one like it last week, just after his birthday, authorities said.
      Thanks for following. My colleague Sam Levin will guide you through the next few hours. Just days after the deadliest mass school shooting in Texas history, the National Rifle Association (NRA) – America’s leading gun lobbyist group – will meet a few hours away in Houston on Friday.Ashton P Woods says they are not welcome in his home town.“These people are coming into our community. The city of Houston needs to kick them out,” said Woods, an activist and founder of Black Lives Matter Houston. “We have to be just as tough about these things as they are.”Woods is helping organize one of several protests planned just outside the George R Brown Convention Center, where NRA members will browse exhibits of firearms and gun paraphernalia and hear speeches from Republican leaders including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.The goal of the Black Lives Matter protest, Woods said, is to “get loud” outside while powerful speakers take the podium inside. Woods said the issue of firearms was particularly important to the civil rights group that primarily tackles issues of police brutality in America.“Whether it be death by suicide, death by cop, death by mass shooter, we need to control the access people have to deadly weapons,” Woods said. “These things are interconnected.”Democratic Texas congressman Colin Allred was another on Wednesday to attack the NRA conference, and its prominent attendees.“It’s a disgrace that these Republicans are choosing to attend the NRA convention, when they should be in their respective legislatures doing everything in their power to prevent the next attack like this,” he said in a video address from the Democratic party’s war room.“When it comes to Ted Cruz, let’s just say he’s one of the biggest recipients of gun lobby spending and was the top recipient of campaign donations from so called gun rights backers in the 2018 election cycle.“We know who Ted Cruz is serving, and it’s not Texans.”Full story:Outrage as NRA to gather in Houston just days after Texas school massacreRead morePolice in Toronto shot and injured a man who was walking down a street carrying a gun in a city neighborhood, and five nearby schools were placed on lockdown, officials in Canada said, according to Reuters.The suspect, whose condition was not immediately clear, was described as a male in his late teens or early 20s, the Toronto police department said. The incident occurred in Port Union, a residential area north of Toronto’s city center. Three of the schools remained on lockdown Thursday afternoon, and two others were declared “hold and secure” due to ongoing police work. A briefing Thursday afternoon by the Texas Department of Public Safety created more questions than answers about a “missing” hour during which the Uvalde gunman was in the school but not confronted by law enforcement officers.Victor Escalon, the department’s regional director, deflected reporters’ questions about why officers did not attempt to stop the gunman in that time.During the short, and sometimes chaotic briefing, Escalon appeared defensive when challenged about the delay. Parents of victims have expressed distress at the apparent hesitation of law enforcement to storm the school, and some begged officers to move in.“There’s lot of possibilities,” Escalon said, insisting that investigators needed time to interview officers from multiple jurisdictions who were eventually present.“At the end of the day our job is to report the facts. We don’t have all the answers. We’re not there yet”.But in laying out a preliminary timeline of the shooting, he did indicate that the gunman appeared to have been able to gain entry to the school through an unlocked back door, and that, contrary to earlier reports, there was no armed police officer on duty at the campus when the shooter walked in and began Tuesday’s deadly rampage that killed 19 students and two teachers.“The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon said, adding that officers first on the scene prioritized calling for back up and trying to evacuate students and children. “He did not respond [to officers trying to speak to him],” Escalon said.Escalon ended the briefing by promising to get back to the media when he had more information to give.‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreThe chief question arising from that brief briefing is why law enforcement did not enter the school and try to save children in the hour between the gunman entering the school and his being killed by a SWAT team from Customs and Border Protection.Victor Escalon of the Texas Department of Public Safety did not discuss what happened in that hour in any detail.He did say “the majority of the gunfire was in the beginning” and said the gunman then fired to keep officers at bay but did not respond to attempts to negotiate. He also said officers made efforts to evacuate other children and teachers.Escalon’s words might suggest that most of the children who were killed were killed shortly after the gunman entered the room. Nonetheless, officers seem not to have attempted to take the gunman down.Escalon answers questions.It appears the door to the school the gunman used was unlocked, he says. “The majority of the gunfire was in the beginning,” Escalon says. The gunman then fired to keep officers at bay but did not respond to attempts to negotiate.There was not a readily available armed officer at the school when the gunman arrived, Escalon says.“At 11.30am the PD got a crash and a man with a gun and you have responding officers.”He can’t say yet what happened in the next 10 minutes with certainty, he says, adding: “There’s a lot of possibilities.”All the officers who were present need to be interviewed, Escalon says, asked about questions about what was done to stop the shooting which are growing with the hour.A British reporter asks: “Is it accurate eyewitnesses were urging police to go in while a SWAT team was awaited, and even asking to borrow police armour to go in and try to rescue their children themselves?” “I’ve heard that information that we have not verified it,” Escalon says.Questions are shouted but Escalon has no answers. He says he needs time.That briefing didn’t clear up much about how police responded to the shooting.Victor Escalon, regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, begins the briefing. He says law enforcement are “hurting inside”, as are other officials and of course the victims and family members and describes how an investigation works.He recounts what is known about the shooting.Salvador Ramos’s grandmother is still alive, Escalon says, in stable condition after being shot in the face.The shooter entered Robb elementary school at 11.40am, after shooting at the building and “numerous rounds are discharged inside the school”. Four minutes later, Uvalde police are inside. They take rounds, move back and get cover, and call for additional resources, as the gunman enters a classroom.Escalon says that during the time the calls for help are being made, officers are also evacuating teachers and students. Approximately an hour later, Escalon says, US Border Patrol tactical teams arrive and shoot and kill the suspect.Now it turns into a rescue operation, he says, the officers asking themselves, “How do we save these children?”Escalon says reports the gunman was confronted by an officer on the way into the school are not accurate. He says he will take questions.A briefing has begun in Uvalde. We’ll follow it here.The chief of the Uvalde police department, Daniel Rodriguez, has just issued a statement defending his officers over the response time to the Robb elementary school shooting.Rodriguez said officers “responded within minutes” and that several of them received non-life threating gunshot wounds from the suspect.A press conference in Uvalde is scheduled to begin within the next 15 minutes or so, and you can expect questions about the timeline of the massacre.NEW: The chief of the Uvalde Police Department has a released a statement saying his officers responded “within minutes” along with school officers. “I know answers will not come fast enough,” he said. pic.twitter.com/8m7GvLZQo0— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) May 26, 2022
      Read more:‘More could have been done’: Texas police under scrutiny over response to school shootingRead moreMore desperately sad news from Uvalde, as if things weren’t bad enough already:Joe Garcia, the husband of Irma Garcia, one of two teachers shot and killed in Uvalde, TX on Tuesday, has reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack. Joe and Irma were high school sweethearts and married 24 years. They leave behind four children. pic.twitter.com/Rlk0M2B8nR— Ernie Zuniga (@Ernie_Zuniga) May 26, 2022
      His death was confirmed on Twitter by Garcia’s nephew John Martinez, who asked for prayers for his family:EXTREMELY heartbreaking and come with deep sorrow to say that my Tia Irma’s husband Joe Garcia has passed away due to grief, i truly am at a loss for words for how we are all feeling, PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR FAMILY, God have mercy on us, this isn’t easy pic.twitter.com/GlUSOutRVV— john martinez ❤️‍🔥 (@fuhknjo) May 26, 2022
      Here’s more on Joe Garcia and this tragic, apparently deadly case of broken heart syndrome.Republicans in the senate have, as expected, blocked the domestic terrorism prevention bill that passed the Democratic-controlled House last week.Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader, changed his vote to no in a procedural move so he can bring the measure back again. Senators voted 47-47, well short of the 60 votes needed for it to advance.The bill was seen as the Democrats’ opening attempt to pass some kind of gun restrictions following the massacre of 10 Black people by a white supremacist gunman at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, almost two weeks ago.It would have established a new domestic terrorism office at the homeland security department that would track and analyze domestic terrorist activity, and require regular reporting of threats from white supremacists and neo-Nazis.Republicans argued the bill was partisan and not needed because of existing laws to tackle domestic terrorism.One of the hosts responding to the Texas shooting on late-night TV on Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel, became visibly upset as he did so. “Once again, we grieve for the little boys and girls whose lives have been ended and whose families have been destroyed,” he said.While the right will “warn us not to politicise” the shooting, Kimmel added, it’s important to remember “they know what they’ve done and they know what they haven’t done”.The “very least we can do” is insist upon background checks for those seeking to purchase a gun, a law that has been stalled in Congress. “They won’t pass it because our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us, they’re listening to the NRA, they’re listening to those people who write them checks who keep them in power,” Kimmel said.“If your solution to children being massacred is armed guards, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on,” the host said before reminding viewers of the many times armed guards and police officers have not prevented school shootings.Kimmel then zeroed in on the Texas senator Ted Cruz, who is scheduled to speak at an NRA event in Houston this weekend. “I refuse to believe he’s unaffected by this,” he said. “He’s not a monster, he’s a human being.”To Cruz and the many others who refuse to recognise the danger of guns, Kimmel said: “It’s OK to admit you made a mistake, it’s not just OK, it’s necessary.”He continued: “Do I think these men are brave people? No I don’t but man I would love it if these guys surprised me.”Kimmel also said “it isn’t a time for moments of silence, this is a time to be loud”, before reminding viewers there have been 27 US school shootings this year and it’s still only May. “How does this make sense to anyone?” he asked. “These are our children.”Kimmel on gun control: ‘Our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us’Read more More