Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pete Buttigieg lead calls for urgent reform after Texas school shooting
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Alex Wong/Getty)
Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among those calling for gun law reform after the horrific Texas school shooting.
A shooter killed at least 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday (24 May), sending waves of grief, shock and anger across the US and beyond.
It marks the 27th school shooting in America this year alone according to Education Week.
President Joe Biden released a statement in the wake of the shooting, saying: “These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why? They have mental health problems, they have domestic disputes in other countries.
“But these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency that they happen in America. Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” He continues.
He was joined in his outrage by Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted to shame those politicians more concerned with overturning abortion rights than mitigating the number of mass shootings in the country through efforts like gun control.
“There is no such thing as being ‘pro-life’ while supporting laws that let children be shot in their schools, elders in grocery stores, worshippers in their houses of faith, survivors by abusers, or anyone in a crowded place,” she wrote.
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on May 24 (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Several other US government officials spoke out calling for more to be done to tackle these situations, including former congresswoman Katie Hill, who tweeted that “actual living, breathing babies are being murdered and they won’t even pass a background check bill”.
Actual living, breathing babies are being murdered and they won’t even pass a background check bill.
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) May 25, 2022
ABC Reporter Dillion Collier tweeted a picture of 10-year-old Xavier Lopez, a victim of the shooting, saying: “He was a 4th grader at Robb Elementary. His family confirms he died in today’s school shooting.”
Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg also wrote: “How many more lives? How many more children? And how much longer before we reject the choices that have made ours the one country where this happens routinely? It is not inevitable, it is horrific. It must end.”
How many more lives? How many more children? And how much longer before we reject the choices that have made ours the one country where this happens routinely? It is not inevitable, it is horrific. It must end.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) May 24, 2022
The death toll makes it the Texas school shooting the deadliest attack on an elementary school since the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary where 20 students and six teachers were killed.
