Teen gunman kills 21 at Texas elementary school

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UVALDE – An 18-year-old gunman killed 18 children and 3 adults at an elementary school in Texas yesterday, in the deadliest US school shooting in years.

The attack in Uvalde, Texas – a small community about an hour from the Mexican border – is the latest in a spree of deadly shootings in America, where horror at the cycle of gun violence has failed to spur enough action to end it.

Governor Greg Abbott, addressing a news conference, said the gunman was believed to have shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary School at around noon, abandoning his vehicle and entering with a handgun, and possibly also a rifle.

“He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said earlier before the death toll rose even higher.


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‘When will this end?’: rage over US gun violence after second mass shooting in 10 days

The second US mass shooting in 10 days, which left 18 young children and three adults dead at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, led to an outpouring of disbelief and potent rage at America’s persistent failure to tackle its epidemic of gun violence.

Tuesday’s horrifying attack in Uvalde, a small, largely Hispanic community outside San Antonio, came just 10 days after the events in Buffalo, New York. There 10 grocery shoppers, most of them African American, were gunned down in a supermarket.

The horror of two large-scale gun tragedies collided just a few months before the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. That assault in December 2012 took the lives of 20 six- and seven-year-olds as well as six school employees.

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Texas mass shooting exposes US system failure

The deadly shooting at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday which killed 21 people has shocked not only the US but also the world. It was the deadliest shooting at a US grade school since the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and it came just 10 days after the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that claimed 10 lives. 

While US President Joe Biden again called for action on gun control, observers and netizens who lamented the growing numbers of mass shootings making America the most dangerous place in the world expressed doubts that a failing political system could make any changes. The persistent failure to change has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Some US media outlets pointed out that Democrats have acted on gun violence, which has become a major midterm issue, and US officials, lawmakers and the public reacted to the latest of a string of mass shootings with grief, pain and outrage. However, the question remains: Will the gun violence end with effective legislation passed or will it just become another topic to be exploited and politicized for election campaigns with little hope for bipartisan compromise? 

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America Gun Problem Exposes The Truth of America's Failing Democracy