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A South Texas town is reeling Tuesday after at least 15 people—including 14 students and a teacher—were killed and an unknown number of others wounded by a gunman during a mass shooting at a local elementary school.
"They fucking failed our kids again," Fred Guttenberg, father of Parkland school shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg, said during an MSNBC interview after Tuesday's massacre. "How many more times are we gonna sit back?... How many more times?"
Julián Casto, a former Democratic San Antonio mayor and U.S. housing and urban development secretary, said on the same network that "this has become part of who we are as a country."
"The free availability of guns has not made us safer in the United States or here in the state of Texas," he added.
The shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, 85 miles west of San Antonio. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that the shooter—who early reports indicate might have had a rifle and a handgun—was fatally shot by law enforcement responding to the scene.
"He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher," Abbott said of the shooter, who multiple law enforcement sources identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.
The governor also said that two police officers sustained non-life-threatening injuries during an exchange of gunfire with the shooter.
Around 600 second- through fourth-grade students attend Robb Elementary School.
Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, said during an afternoon press conference that several adults and students had been injured in the attack.
"At this point, the investigation is leading to tell us that the suspect did act alone during this heinous crime," he said.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), Tuesday's incident was the third-deadliest U.S. school shooting of the past decade, behind the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut, in which 28 people were killed, and the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, which took 17 lives.
GVA says there have been at least 212 mass shootings and at least 7,584 gun deaths—including 411 children under the age of 12—in the United States so far this year.
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.
Brett Wilkins | Radio Free (2022-05-24T20:31:38+00:00) At Least 14 Children, 1 Teacher Killed by Gunman at Texas Elementary School. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/05/24/at-least-14-children-1-teacher-killed-by-gunman-at-texas-elementary-school/
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