Fifteen slaughtered in Uvalde, Texas by gunman who targeted elementary school

Four­teen young stu­dents and one teacher are dead after a gun­man tar­get­ed and attacked Robb Ele­men­tary School in Uvalde, Texas, in what has trag­i­cal­ly become just the lat­est in an increas­ing­ly long list of Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties that have been sense­less­ly ripped apart by pre­ventable gun violence.

“The dead­ly shoot­ing began 11:43 AM [Cen­tral Time] Tues­day at Robb Ele­men­tary off Old Car­ri­zo Road near U.S. High­way 83,” SBG San Anto­nio report­ed. “Robb Ele­men­tary has an enroll­ment of just under 600 students.”

Uvalde, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 15,751, is about eighty-four miles away from San Anto­nio. It has been described as a tight knit com­mu­ni­ty both by res­i­dents and by nation­al reporters who are now sta­tioned in town to report on the tragedy.

The per­pe­tra­tor, whose name we will not men­tion here, was an eigh­teen year old who resided in the area. The author­i­ties say that he is deceased. Report­ed­ly, he was armed with mul­ti­ple weapons, includ­ing a rifle as well as a hand­gun. It’s still ear­ly in the inves­ti­ga­tion, so many details aren’t yet available.

But this we know: four­teen beau­ti­ful young chil­dren who had their lives ahead of them are dead, along with a teacher. They were slaugh­tered with guns.

The shoot­ing is the coun­try’s dead­liest so far this year, and hor­rif­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar to a shoot­ing from almost ten years ago, in which a gun­man attacked Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School in New­town, Con­necti­cut. After that atroc­i­ty and oth­ers, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and then-Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden made gun safe­ty a top pri­or­i­ty and brought pro­pos­als for­ward to Con­gress to strength­en gun safety.

Con­gress, how­ev­er, took no action. At the urg­ing of the gun lob­by, Sen­ate Repub­li­cans used the fil­i­buster to block any leg­is­la­tion from being considered.

At the state lev­el, Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled states like Con­necti­cut and Wash­ing­ton began pass­ing gun safe­ty laws to pre­vent and reduce gun violence.

Mean­while, Texas and Repub­li­can states did the oppo­site. At the behest of the gun lob­by, they made it eas­i­er to get a gun and com­mit mur­der with a gun.

Con­se­quent­ly, sense­less gun vio­lence has con­tin­ued to plague the Unit­ed States.

Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott, who is seek­ing reelec­tion this autumn, non­sen­si­cal­ly stat­ed fol­low­ing the slaugh­ter of four­teen young chil­dren and a teacher that what hap­pened is “a hor­rif­ic tragedy that can­not be tol­er­at­ed in the state of Texas.”

But cur­rent state pol­i­cy — request­ed, endorsed, and imple­ment­ed by Greg Abbott — is that such tragedies can and will be tolerated.

When your response to mass shoot­ings is to make it eas­i­er to buy a gun and use a gun to injure or mur­der oth­er peo­ple, you’re set­ting the stage for more atroc­i­ties like this. You’re say­ing it’s pub­lic pol­i­cy to “tol­er­ate” such carnage.

Mass shoot­ings are not com­mon­place in oth­er devel­oped coun­tries. They hap­pen over and over and over again in Amer­i­ca because we allow them to hap­pen.

As The Onion puts it in a fake news sto­ry it often repub­lish­es (‘No Way To Pre­vent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Reg­u­lar­ly Hap­pens), the Repub­li­can posi­tion on pre­vent­ing gun vio­lence is the rhetor­i­cal equiv­a­lent of a shrug:

“It’s a shame, but what can we do? There real­ly wasn’t any­thing that was going to keep this guy from snap­ping and killing a lot of peo­ple if that’s what he real­ly want­ed.” At press time, res­i­dents of the only eco­nom­i­cal­ly advanced nation in the world where rough­ly two mass shoot­ings have occurred every month for the past five years were refer­ring to them­selves and their sit­u­a­tion as “help­less.”

Gun enthu­si­asts who oppose gun safe­ty laws often cite the Sec­ond Amend­ment to jus­ti­fy this con­tin­ued help­less­ness. But the Sec­ond Amend­ment does not say thou shalt not pass any gun safe­ty laws. It speaks of rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties that need to be in bal­ance. That is why the words “well reg­u­lat­ed mili­tia” are there.

Sen­a­tor Chris Mur­phy of Con­necti­cut, who is one of the most elo­quent and out­spo­ken cham­pi­ons for gun safe­ty in Con­gress, got up and deliv­ered a must-watch speech in the Sen­ate fol­low­ing the shoot­ing in Uvalde in which he rhetor­i­cal­ly asked his Repub­li­can col­leagues: Why are you here?

Said Mur­phy:

“Why do you go through all the has­sle of get­ting this job, of putting your­self in a posi­tion of author­i­ty, if your answer is that, as the slaugh­ter increas­es, as our kids run for their lives, we do noth­ing? What we are we doing? Why are you here?”

Pres­i­dent Biden, who is just return­ing from a mul­ti-day trip to Asia, will address what has hap­pened in Texas in a speech from the Roo­sevelt Room, the White House says. That speech is sched­uled ten­ta­tive­ly for 5:15 PM Pacif­ic Time.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, the third rank­ing Demo­c­rat in the Sen­ate, says she is eager and enthu­si­as­tic to pass laws to tack­le the scourge of gun vio­lence, if Repub­li­cans will stop lis­ten­ing to the dic­tates of the gun lob­by and coop­er­ate with Democrats.

“No one should have to endure the pain of los­ing a child like this,” said Murray.

“That’s what we’re talk­ing about here. Chil­dren. Chil­dren gunned down in their class­rooms, lives cut short and fam­i­lies shattered.’

“How many more lives have to be lost and how much more heart­break must we suf­fer before my Repub­li­can col­leagues wake up to what the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans have known for years? Gun safe­ty laws save lives.”

“Every time my Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues and I have come to the Sen­ate floor with pop­u­lar leg­is­la­tion to help pre­vent gun vio­lence, our Repub­li­can col­leagues block us from even debat­ing the bills — let alone vot­ing on them. Think about that. They won’t even allow a debate on leg­is­la­tion that would save lives.”

“In the com­ing days and weeks, Repub­li­cans will not be able to hide from the ques­tions that par­ents around the coun­try are ask­ing: what are you doing to pre­vent the next school shoot­ing? What are you doing to pro­tect our chil­dren so they can go to school with­out fear? I am ready to work with any one of my Sen­ate col­leagues to take imme­di­ate action to pro­tect our kids and end the gun vio­lence cri­sis in our country.”

Our team can­not think of any­thing that would be more pro-life than pre­vent­ing chil­dren from being slaugh­tered in their class­rooms. When Amer­i­cans go to wor­ship at a church, syn­a­gogue, or mosque, they should be safe. When they go to the movie the­ater, they should be safe. When strolling through a park, or a shop­ping mall, or using mass tran­sit, they should be safe.

To any­one read­ing this who con­sid­ers them­selves to be a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed “pro-life” con­ser­v­a­tive, we ask you: Are you will­ing to join us in demand­ing that Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials stop doing what the gun lob­by wants and start lis­ten­ing to the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in this coun­try who want to pre­vent gun vio­lence? Because it’s with­in your pow­er to be the change and do more than just pray this does­n’t keep hap­pen­ing, week after week and month after month.

And for those on the reli­gious right, con­sid­er that the God you are pray­ing to is fer­vent­ly hop­ing that one day, you will tru­ly learn and appre­ci­ate what it means to love your neigh­bor as your­self, and val­ue lives over guns.