Texas mourns its dead children, anger rises in the United States

by time news


AHundreds of grief-stricken people gathered Wednesday evening to mourn the 19 children and two female teachers who were victims of a horrific massacre at their school in Uvalde, Texas, committed by an ill-mannered 18-year-old using a legally purchased assault rifle.

The tragedy, which raises the eternal question of the limitation of firearms in the United States, has stunned this small town of 16,000 inhabitants, mostly Hispanic, with pain. A thousand people gathered Wednesday night for a vigil at a rodeo hall in Uvalde.

“I am heartbroken,” sobbed Ryan Ramirez, who lost his 10-year-old daughter Alithia in the shooting. By his side, his wife Jessica is crying softly, their other daughter in her arms.

“She was a very good artist” and yearned for greatness, Mr Ramirez says as he flips through a portfolio of Alithia’s colorful paintings and birthday cards she drew for her mother. “My daughter would have liked everyone affected to be strong, to stick together. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Esmeralda Bravo, for her part, holds a photo of Nevaeh, her late granddaughter. “There is no explanation,” she said. “She was a good little girl, very shy and very pretty. (…) Having the support of the community means a lot to me, but I would prefer my little girl to be here by my side”.

Disturbing details

Disturbing details have continued to emerge since the killings.

Speaking to reporters, Texas Governor Greg Abbott revealed that the murderer, Salvador Ramos, who was killed by police, shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face before walking to school Primary Robb.

He had previously announced on Facebook his intention to attack his grandmother who, although seriously injured, managed to alert the police.

He then posted a new message to say he did. Then, at least 15 minutes before the massacre, a third to let it be known that his next target was a school. He went there wearing a bulletproof vest and an AR-15, a civilian version of a military assault rifle designed to kill as many people as possible in record time.

The security forces tried to prevent him from entering the school, but after an exchange of gunfire, he managed to barricade himself in a classroom. In addition to the 21 dead, the tragedy left 17 injured.

In the United States, school shootings are a recurring scourge that successive governments have so far been powerless to stem.

The debate on gun regulation in the country is almost on hold, given the lack of hope that Congress will pass an ambitious national law on the issue.

“I am sad and angry at our government for not doing enough to limit access to weapons,” said Rosie Buantel, a resident of Uvalde, after mass on Wednesday. “We have experienced this too many times, and nothing is done,” asserts this fifty-year-old.

“Predictable”

A sign of the tension around the subject, Governor Greg Abbott’s press conference, a Republican, was interrupted by his opponent Beto O’Rourke, who accused him of having his share of “responsibility”.

“You say it was not foreseeable, it was completely foreseeable from the moment you decided not to do anything,” said this figure from the Democratic Party in Texas.

President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he would visit this state with his wife “in the coming days”.

The day before, he had delivered an emotional speech from the White House, calling for “transforming pain into action”.

“When, for the love of God, are we going to face the gun lobby?” he said, saying he was “disgusted and tired” in the face of the litany of school shootings.

The powerful pro-arms lobby, the NRA, cleared itself of all responsibility on Wednesday, denouncing “the act of an isolated and disturbed criminal”.

“I consider that person to be the absolute evil,” Abbott said for his part, expressing a common position among American Republicans that unlimited access to guns is not to blame for the epidemic. violence that strikes the country.

This is one of the worst killings of recent years in the United States.

The young murderer, of American nationality, had recently bought two assault rifles and 375 cartridges, just after his 18th birthday.

The AR-15 rifle, an extremely lethal weapon, is fatally known to have already been used in other shootings with heavy tolls, such as the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead, the majority of them teenagers.

A former friend of the shooter, Santos Valdez, told The Washington Post that Salvador Ramos was bullied as a child because of a speech impediment, and once slashed his face ‘just for fun’ .

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26/05/2022 06:14:37 – Uvalde (United States) (AFP) – © 2022 AFP

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