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As mourners in Uwalde, Texas, prepared to bury 19 children and two teachers, elected officials on Monday vowed to investigate last week’s elementary school massacre and police misconduct and make changes to gun laws.
President Biden, who spent nearly four hours Sunday visiting the families of Uwalde’s victims, told reporters he would not give up efforts to achieve “sound” weapons legislation.
“The victims were their families, they spent three hours and 40 minutes with me. They waited all this time. Some arrived two hours earlier, “Biden told White House reporters. “The pain is palpable. I think a lot of that is unnecessary. I will continue to insist. “
Biden visits Uwalde, a city in mourning
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Judicial Subcommittee of the House of Representatives called for hearings on Capitol Hill to give families a chance to tell their stories and look for ways to prevent mass shootings.
“We will take a comprehensive look at Uvalde and the incident that occurred last Tuesday,” said Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Whose Houston-based district is hours from Uvalde and Robb Elementary School, the site of the shooting. Jackson Lee attended a church with President and First Lady Jill Biden in Uwalde on Sunday.
Jackson Lee said the purpose of the hearings, which may be held in Texas, will be to determine the “facts” of what happened and to propose solutions. “We can do a lot of things,” she said in an interview, adding that her focus is currently on the “mourning and pain” of families.
The congresswoman noted that the nation celebrated Remembrance Day on Monday, honoring men and women who fell in battle. “We have children killed as if they were in battle,” she said. “And that’s not appropriate for this nation.”
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One of the survivors Biden met on Sunday was 9-year-old Jaden, who hid under a desk in her classroom. In an interview Monday, Jadien, who was identified by his own name only because he was a minor, said he had asked the president, “Can you make our schools safer and send more police, please?”
“I’ll try,” Biden said, according to Jaden and his grandmother, Betty Freire, whose last name is different from her grandson’s.
The boy had another request: could the president also make sure that teenagers can’t carry rifles because, the child said, “it’s dangerous.” Biden’s response: “I’m working on it.”
Biden recalled to reporters on Monday his visit to a trauma hospital in New York, where he was shown X-rays of victims of the shooting. “A 9mm bullet blows the lungs out of the body,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then [a high-caliber weapon] in terms of self-defense, hunting. “
Authorities say Uvaldo’s shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos, bought more than 1,000 rounds days before the shooting. More than 300 rounds were found at the school, according to police.
“There’s no point in being able to buy something that can fire up to 300 rounds,” Biden said.
He added that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, “was never absolute”, noting: “You could not buy a gun when the Second Amendment was adopted”.
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At the same time, the president acknowledged that much of the power to impose gun safety rules rests with Congress, where lawmakers have been debating the issue for years. “I can’t ban weapons. I can’t change the background checks. “I can’t do that,” Biden said.
He added that he believes that “things have become so bad that everyone is becoming more rational about it.” At least that’s my hope and my prayer. “
Some lawmakers have suggested that Uwalde’s attack could prompt Congress to at least limited action.
“This time there are more Republicans who are interested in talking about finding a way forward than I saw from Sandy Hook,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) Told ABC “This Week”, referring to the shooting in school in Connecticut. a decade ago, which killed 20 students and six adults but did not lead to the adoption of comprehensive legislation at the federal level.
Jackson Lee, whose criminal committee is part of the judicial committee, said he would seek to change gun safety legislation, including a proposal to require a seven-day waiting period for purchases of assault weapons such as the one used in Uwalde.
On May 24, a number of federal and local law enforcement agencies responded to reports of shootings outside and outside inside the school.
But officers waited more than an hour – through numerous calls from 911 students – to break into the classroom, where the gunman and many of his victims were locked up.
Officials said school district police chief Pete Aredondo incorrectly treated the attack as a barricade situation rather than an active shooting situation after the initial shooting stopped.
Aredondo did not speak publicly after the shooting. He was recently elected to Uwalde’s municipal council and was due to be sworn in on Tuesday night. On Monday, the mayor of Uwalde issued a statement saying the council meeting had been canceled so the community could focus on grief.
Timeline: How the police reacted to the shooter at Uvalde School
U.S. Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat representing Uwalde, said Monday that he was sending a written request to Stephen K. McCrow, director of the Texas Public Safety Department, for a full ballistic report and asked to know “exactly what time, what officer.” and from which agency they came and where they were located ”in the school.
He said better-equipped and trained officers should have intervened in response to the incident when it became apparent that school police were not appropriate to deal with an active shooter, he said.
“There were clear, clear 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 conduct a thorough investigation,” he said. “It will not bring these children back, of course, but we must make sure we get the answers so that it never happens again.”
Vilegas reported from Uwalde. Seung Min Kim and Monika Mathur of Washington contributed to this report.
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