Could the tragedy be avoided? The eternal question of the limitation of firearms in the United States imposed itself on Wednesday in Uvalde as in the rest of the country, the day after the appalling massacre of 19 schoolchildren in this Texas city stunned by mourning.
An 18-year-old school dropout, Salvador Ramos, opened fire there with a semi-automatic rifle in a primary school, also killing two teachers before being killed by the police.
Sign of the tension around the subject, the press conference of the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, was interrupted by his opponent Beto O’Rourke, who accused him of “doing nothing” and “offering nothing”. . “You say it was not foreseeable, it was completely foreseeable from the moment you decided not to do anything,” said this Texas figure from the Democratic Party.
The day before, President Joe Biden, who was returning from a tour of Asia when the shooting occurred, had delivered an emotional speech from the White House, calling for “turning pain into action”. “When, for God’s sake, are we going to face the gun lobby? he had launched, saying he was “disgusted and tired” in the face of the litany of school shootings.
The debate on gun regulation in the United States is almost on hold given the lack of hope that Congress will pass an ambitious national law on the issue.
What we know about the drama
A lead screed covered Wednesday Uvalde and its 16,000 inhabitants. The day before, at midday, the horror fell there when Salvador Ramos committed one of the worst killings in recent years in the United States.
The 18-year-old first targeted his grandmother, whom he seriously injured and who is now in hospital. He then drove to Robb Elementary School, near which he crashed his car.
Informed of this accident – and the fact that he was armed – the police tried to prevent him from entering the school, but after an exchange of gunfire, he managed to barricade himself. in a classroom, detailed Wednesday morning Chris Olivarez, spokesperson for the Texas police, on the CNN channel.
It was there that he massacred 19 children, killed two teachers and injured 17 with an AR-15 assault rifle, before being shot dead by police.
The young shooter had recently bought himself two assault rifles and 375 cartridges, just after his 18th birthday.
The AR-15 is notoriously known for having been used in other shootings with heavy tolls, such as the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 people dead.
Shocked
The Robb Elementary School district, still gripped by the drama, is neither poor nor well-to-do: it is inhabited by a middle class of Americans who live in bungalows with a small garden where you can sometimes see a swing or a barbecue.
The school will remain closed until the summer holidays, by order of the school authorities. The city of Uvalde, for its part, indicated that it was collecting donations to help finance the medical expenses of the families of victims.
American schools are regularly hit by these tragedies, such as that of Sandy Hook elementary school, which occurred in 2012 in Connecticut, where a 20-year-old mentally retarded man killed 26 people, including 20 children aged 6 and 7, before committing suicide.
“It only happens in this country, and nowhere else. In no other country do children go to school thinking they might get shot,” said Democratic Senator Chris Murphy from this state in the northeastern United States on Tuesday, who ” begged” his elected colleagues to act.