Senator Lee of Utah who has voted against mandatory gun registration said that “glorification of violence” and “breakdown of the family” are responsible for the shooting, and how do you address those? Censorship of Netflix and Hulu? Requiring regular church attendance? Senator Romney said, “Grief overwhelms the soul. The governor said it was not a political issue, that evil is everywhere, that gun control is not the answer. The sign “Bienvenidos” in the schoolyard.
The agonized parents, the terrorized kids, the lingering effects of fear in the lives of ordinary people for years to come. We accept street shootings in sketchy neighborhoods, but 10-year-old kids trapped in a classroom, the screaming, the panic, some kids jumping out of windows, it’s unbearable.
The justice of the peace who had to write the death certificates collapsed in grief. Many of them were so severely shot up that authorities had to ask grieving parents for DNA samples so the bodies could be identified. Sources said the teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia loved their kids dearly and died defending them. The list of the dead were mostly Hispanic names, Rodriguez, Garcia, Lopez, Garza, Torres. For a moment I thought it was a scene from Ukraine, but no. Videos from Uvalde showed scores of heavily armed cops walking around, bearing assault rifles, bulky in their armored vests, even an armored vehicle outside the Robb Elementary School. A team of three Border Patrol troopers, carrying a ballistic shield, broke into the classroom at last and the shooter was exterminated. The hour delay between the first call to 911 and the shooting of the shooter was not explained in the media. The grief of a gun-lobby governor seemed rather thin but he went because he had to. Of the ten worst mass shootings in America in recent history, five have taken place in Texas, so it was brave of Governor Abbott to go to Uvalde after the massacre of nineteen fourth-graders by an 18-year-old high school dropout with two newly bought AR-15s who had a whole hour to kill the kids and two teachers.