Yesterday’s tragic shooting at an elementary school in Texas, following another mass murder incident in Buffalo, N.Y., has incensed former President Barack Obama to speak out in a major way.
“Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies — and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school or take them to a grocery store or any other public space,” Obama wrote in a Twitter thread on Tuesday, also expressing his condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the incident.
“Michelle and I grieve with Uvalde families, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” he wrote.
“We’re also angry for them,” he added. “Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo — our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that has shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.”
“It’s long past time for action, any kind of action. And it’s another tragedy—a quieter but no less tragic one—for families to wait another day,” he wrote.
“May God bless the memory of the victims, and in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds,” Obama concluded.
With 18 victims, most of them young elementary school kids of color, the shooting in Uvalde, Texas is the deadliest school shooting on record since the Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened during Obama’s presidency in 2012.
The full tally stands so far at 18 children and two teachers, and the shooter themselves, as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos attacked those at Robb Elementary School. According to local authorities, Ramos entered the premises after killing his own grandmother, opened fire, and then was shot and killed by authorities responding to the incident.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) took to the podium for a press conference to announce Ramos’ death.
The massacre at Robb Elementary School happened a week after the mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets location in Buffalo, N.Y., which resulted in the deaths of 10 people and injuries to three others.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also ripped into his Senate colleagues who refused to take meaningful action on gun reform following the school massacre.
“Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? 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 this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?” he said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
“What are we doing? Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn’t inevitable. The kids weren’t unlucky. It only happens in this country,” he said.
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