Wimbledon two-time British champion Andy Murray said the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, made him “angry”.
Key points:
- Murray says he “can’t understand” that “nothing changes”
- The Texas shooting has intensified the long-standing national debate over U.S. gun laws
- In 1996, a gunman killed 16 students and a teacher before committing suicide in Dunblane
He added that the story of a survivor of the incident was similar to his own experience in the 1996 Dunblane massacre in Scotland.
An 18-year-old man armed with a semi-automatic rifle stormed an elementary school in Texas last week and killed 19 children and two teachers.
The attack, which came 10 days after a shooting in Buffalo, New York, left 10 dead, has intensified the long-running national debate over U.S. gun laws.
“It’s incredibly annoying and it makes you angry. I think there have been more than 200 mass shootings in the United States this year and nothing changes. I can’t understand that,” Murray said.
“My feeling is that at some point you will probably do something different. You can’t keep tackling the problem by buying more weapons and having more weapons in the country. I don’t see how it can be solved.
“But it could be wrong. Maybe we’ll try something different and see if you get a different result.”
Andy Murray in his Dunblane Elementary School uniform. (Instagram: Andy Murray)
Murray grew up in Dunblane and was a student at the city’s local elementary school when a gunman killed 16 students and a teacher before committing suicide. It is the deadliest mass shooting in modern British history.
“I heard something on the radio the other day and I was a kid at that school,” Murray told the BBC.
“I experienced something similar when I was in Dunblane, a teacher who came out and greeted all the kids under the tables and told them to go into hiding.
“And he was a child [in Uvalde] telling exactly the same story about how he survived.
“They said they go through these exercises, from young children … How? How is it normal for children to go through exercises, in case someone enters the school with a gun?”
Reuters