Former US President Donald Trump has spoken out against calls for a gun ban, which have resumed in American society following a shooting at a Texas primary school that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Evil in the world is not a reason to take away the weapons of law-abiding citizens, Trump said at the annual meeting of the National Arms Association.
A video from the convention center in Houston, Texas, where the meeting is being held, shows that the main hall, with a capacity of 3,600 people, is half occupied when Donald Trump takes the stage.
“The existence of evil in our world is not a reason to take away the weapons of law-abiding citizens,” Trump said.
On Monday, an 18-year-old entered a primary school in Yuwaldi and killed 19 children under the age of 10, as well as two of their teachers, before being shot dead by police.
South Dakota Gov. Christie Nome, a Republican, also urged those present not to back down in the fight against gun control.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, and his deputy, Dan Patrick, declined to speak to the audience. Patrick explained that he did not want to increase the pain and grief of the families and all the mourners in Yuwaldi, where the school is located.
The decision by the US National Weapons Association to hold its largest annual gathering is part of a decade-long strategy to withstand pressure to control firearms, which has continued since the 1999 high school shooting in Colorado.
Hundreds of people, meanwhile, protested in front of the Houston Convention Center, demanding control of gun sales.
“Protect our children, not guns,” and “Your hobby is not worth the lives of our children,” he wrote on some of the posters, according to Reuters.
Protesters, about 500 people, also carried crosses and photos of victims of the shooting at the primary school. They chanted “NOA, go away” and “Shame, this could be your children”.
The Texas shooter wrote on Facebook minutes before he attacked the school
The attacker in Texas, who killed 19 children and two teachers, warned on the Internet that he would shoot minutes before he opened fire.
This was stated by Governor Greg Abbott, quoted by Reuters. According to his comments yesterday, the man killed by the police sent a message on Tuesday that he would shoot his grandmother, and then confirmed on the Internet that he had done so.
The suspect’s grandmother, shot in the face before her grandson left home (where they lived together), survived and called the police.
The attack
According to available information, the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, gave no other indication that he was planning to carry out the attack, which became the deadliest shooting at a school in the United States in nearly a decade.
After shooting his grandmother, he escaped the attack and crashed his car near the Rob Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, about 130 km west of San Antonio, police said. He then managed to escape from a school police officer who approached him before rushing inside. Details of when he escaped from the police are not yet known.
With his AR-15 rifle, Ramos headed to a fourth-grade classroom, where he killed his victims with legally purchased 375 rounds days before the shooting.
Publications or personal messages
Meanwhile, police cordoned off the building and smashed windows to help children and staff escape. U.S. Border Patrol agents also reacted and entered the building to confront the shooter, injuring one agent “in the crossfire,” Homeland Security officials said.
In the end, Ramos, who dropped out of high school with no known criminal record or history of mental illness, was shot dead by law enforcement.
According to Abbot, 17 people received non-life-threatening injuries. Among the injured were “many children” who survived the shooting in their classroom, said Texas Public Safety spokesman Chris Olivares.
According to the governor of Texas, the online posts are on Facebook, but a spokesman for the parent company, Meta, said they were just personal messages. She declined to reveal details of who received the messages.
The arms control debate
Investigators have not given a motive for the shooting, and little is known about the shooter’s past in the first two days after the attack. The mother of the suspect, Adriana Reyes, said in an interview with the Daily Mail that her son is a “reserved” person who does not have many friends.
Ten days earlier, an outspoken proponent of white supremacy theories shot dead 13 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
In a tense political atmosphere, Beto O’Rorke, the Democratic nominee, Abbot’s rival in the November election, adjourned a press conference to oppose the governor’s gun law, shouting, “You’re doing nothing!”
Several officers gathered on the stage around the governor, shouting at O’Rorke. “You are a sick son of a bitch who would come to such a deal to make a political question,” said one of them, although it was unclear who.
Abbott said strict gun laws do not prevent violence, citing states like New York. He said politicians should instead focus on treating and preventing mental health.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who called for new gun security restrictions in a national television broadcast Tuesday night, plans to travel to Texas soon, a senior administration official said.
New legislation seems unlikely to be passed in Washington. Virtually all Republicans in Congress oppose tighter gun control, and there were no signs that the latest attack would change the equation.
The annual meeting of the National Weapons Association begins Friday in Houston, where Republicans, including Abbott, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and former President Donald Trump, had to address the gun-rights group. The association expressed sympathy for the victims but said the event would go according to plan.
In 2012, a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Uvalde has about 16,000 residents, nearly 80 percent of whom are Hispanic or Hispanic, according to the latest U.S. census.
