Joe Biden demands US ‘stand up’ to gun makers after Texas massacre
- Teenage shooter opened fire at junior school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and a teacher
- The Robb Elementary School attack was the deadliest since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012
“I hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” Biden said at the White House, in sometimes halting, emotional remarks. “Another massacre in Uvalde, Texas. An junior school. Beautiful, innocent second, third and fourth graders.”
“As a nation,” he said, “we have to ask: When are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When are we going to do what we know in our gut needs to be done?”
Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School is the latest in a string of mass shootings that have rocked the country. Just 10 days ago, a gunman in Buffalo, New York, opened fire at a supermarket, killing 10 people in a racist attack.
The attack in Uvalde, which is about 130km west of San Antonio, is the most deadly US school shooting since a gunman killed 26 people, most of them first-graders, at the Sandy Hook junior school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
The shooter, an 18-year-old, was killed Tuesday by responding officers.