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As the bad guys in Uvalde, Texas, were preparing to bury 19 children and two teachers, elected officials on Monday vowed to examine last week’s elementary school massacre and faulty police response, and push for changes to the laws. about weapons.
President Biden, who spent nearly four hours on Sunday visiting the families of Uvalde’s victims, told reporters he would not give up efforts to get “common sense” weapons legislation.
“The people who were victims, their families, spent three hours and 40 minutes with me. They waited all this time. Some arrived two hours earlier,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “The pain is palpable. I think a lot of things are unnecessary. I’ll keep pushing.”
They visit Uvalde, a city of mourning
Meanwhile, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crimes called for hearings on Capitol Hill to give families a chance to tell their stories and find ways to avoid mass shootings.
“Let’s take a closer look at Uvalde and the incident that happened last Tuesday,” said Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.). The Houston district is several hours from Uvalde Elementary School. Robb, the site of the shootings. Jackson Lee attended church Sunday with President and First Lady Jill Biden in Uvalde.
Jackson Lee said the goal of the hearings, which could also take place in Texas, would be to determine “the facts” of what happened and propose solutions. “We can do several things,” he said in an interview, adding that his focus right now is on the “grief and pain” of families.
The congresswoman noted that she celebrated Memorial Day on Monday by honoring men and women who fell in battle. “We have children killed as if they were in a battle,” he said. “And that doesn’t suit this nation.”
After Uvalde, this longtime gun owner gave up his AR-15
One of the survivors Biden met on Sunday was 9-year-old Jaydien, who hid under a desk in his classroom. In an interview on Monday, Jaydien, who identifies himself by name only because he is a minor, said he asked the president, “Could you please make our schools safer and send more police, please? “
“I’ll try,” Biden said, according to Jaydien and his grandmother, Betty Fraire, whose last name is different from his grandson’s.
The boy had one more request: the president could also make sure teenagers can’t carry rifles because, the boy said, “it’s dangerous.” Biden’s response: “I’m working on this.”
Biden recalled to reporters on Monday for a visit to a New York trauma hospital, where he was shown x-rays of shooting victims. “A 9mm bullet ejects the lung from the body,” he said. “There is simply no rational basis for [a high-caliber weapon] in terms of self-protection, hunting ”.
Authorities say Uvalde gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos, 18, bought more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition days before the shooting. According to police, more than 300 rounds were found inside the school.
“It doesn’t make sense to be able to buy something that can shoot up to 300 rounds,” Biden said.
He added that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, “was never absolute,” and noted that “a cannon could not be bought when the Second Amendment was passed.”
From Sandy Hook to Buffalo and Uvalde: Ten Years of Gun Control Failure
At the same time, the president acknowledged that much of the power to impose arms security rules rests with Congress, where lawmakers have debated the issue for years. “I can’t ban a gun. I can’t change background checks. I can’t do that,” Biden said.
He added that he believes that “things have gone so badly that everyone is becoming more rational about it. At least that is my hope and my prayer.”
Some lawmakers have indicated that Uvalde’s attack could spur Congress to at least limited action.
“There are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a way forward this time than I’ve ever seen since Sandy Hook,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) Told ABC’s “This Week.” to a shooting at a school in Connecticut. A decade ago it killed 20 students and six adults, but it did not lead to the passage of comprehensive federal legislation.
Jackson Lee, a crime group member of the Judiciary Committee, said he would try to amend gun safety legislation, including a proposal to require a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of weapons. assault like the one used in Uvalde.
On May 24, a number of federal and local law enforcement agencies responded to reports of shooting outside and within the school.
But officers waited more than an hour, through multiple student 911 calls, to storm the classroom where the gunman and many of his victims were locked up.
Officials have said the school district police chief Pete Arredondo mistakenly treated the attack as a barricade situation rather than an active shooter situation once the initial firing was stopped.
Arredondo has not spoken publicly since the shooting. He was recently elected to the City Council of Uvalde and was supposed to be sworn in on Tuesday evening. On Monday, the mayor of Uvalde issued a statement saying that the council meeting had been canceled so that the community could focus on mourning.
Chronology: how the police responded to the shooter of the Uvalde school
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat representing Uvalde, said Monday he is sending a written request to Steven C. McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, for a full ballistic report and demanding to know “exactly what time, what officer and what agency he showed up with, and where they were assigned ”to the school.
He said the best-equipped and trained officers responding to the incident should have intervened when it became clear that school police were not fit to handle an active shooter, he said.
“There were clear and unambiguous violations of the protocol here,” he said.
“I want to make sure we have access to all the evidence as soon as possible so that we can get a thorough investigation,” he said. “He’s not going to take these kids back, of course, but we have to make sure we get the answers so that this never happens again.”
Villegas reported from Uvalde. Seung Min Kim and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.