Texas school shooting: Biden to console grieving families

US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are set to travel to Uvalde, Texas, the site of a mass school shooting, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, the White House announced on Thursday.

The White House said the visit was to "grieve with the community that lost 21 lives in the horrific" shooting at Robb Elementary School. The first family will travel to Texas on Sunday to honor the victims and meet with the families who lost their loved ones to the violence.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is also the parent of an elementary school student, made an impassioned plea at the White House to urge lawmakers to address gun violence. 

"These were elementary school kids, they should be losing their first teeth not losing their lives," she said on Thursday.

Days earlier, Biden spoke of the pain of losing a child, calling for tighter gun laws. 

"When in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?" he said. "Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?"

Congress accused of inaction

On Thursday, Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he was ashamed the country is "becoming desensitized to the murder of children" and that immediate action was required to prevent the loss of more lives in school shootings.

Addressing a House Education and Labor Committee on the Education Department's budget and priorities, Cardona started his testimony by addressing the shooting. 

"After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after each of these and other massacres, we as educators did our best to look parents in their eyes and assure them that we'll do everything to protect their babies," he said referencing deadly school shootings in Colorado, Connecticut and Florida.

On the same day, Senate Republicans voted along party lines to block debate on a bill that represented Congress' first effort to address mass shootings since the massacre in Uvalde and a white supremacist's killing of 10 Black people in New York.

The 47-47 vote along party lines fell short of the 60 required to launch a debate on a bill titled the "Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act." It was aimed at authorizing federal agencies to jointly monitor and report on domestic terrorism within the US, including incidents linked to white supremacy.

In recent years, mass shootings have sparked discussion in Congress but little action has been taken as the Republican and Democratic parties remain deeply divided on gun restrictions.

Texas police face scrutiny

The latest tragedy has also raised questions about the police’s response to the shooting, with several angry parents demanding accountability from authorities. 

During the shooting on Tuesday, the 18-year-old gunman crashed his pickup truck into a ditch outside the school at 11:28 a.m. local time — jumping out of the vehicle carrying an AR-15-style rifle. Nearly 90 minutes later, at 12:58 p.m., law enforcement radio chatter revealed that the shooter had been killed and the siege was over.

After two days of conflicting information, investigators said a school district police officer was not at the school when Ramos arrived and the officer had not confronted Ramos outside the building, contrary to their earlier reports.

Ramos entered the school "unobstructed" through an unlocked door at about 11:40 a.m., after shooting at two people coming out of a nearby funeral home. The first police officers arrived at least 12 minutes after the shooter exited his car and did not pursue him until four minutes after arriving. 

A group of Border Patrol tactical officers entered the school nearly an hour later, at 12:45 p.m., and engaged in a shootout with the gunman, who died just before 1 p.m.

NRA meeting to go ahead despite shooting

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the country's largest gun lobby, is set to go ahead with a major conference in Houston, Texas — even as the state mourns the latest mass shooting deaths.

The conference is set to kick off later on Friday, with former President Donald Trump and other Republicans set to speak. Protests are planned for the conference, which is set to end on Sunday.

Despite increasing criticism, the gun lobby has held firm in a decades-long policy of pushing back against calls for gun control measures in the aftermath of mass shootings at schools.

"What is inappropriate is that the leadership of the National Rifle Association has proven time and time again, that they are contributing to the problem of gun violence, not trying to solve it," White House press secretary Jean-Pierre said.

"It's shameful that the NRA and their allies have stood in the way of every attempt to advance measures that we all know will save lives," she added.

see/rs (Reuters, AP)