Pete Garza (56) brought white roses, one for each victim. With a bunch of 21 pieces he walks down the street in Uvalde, Texas. He is on his way to primary school where his cousin, teacher Eva Mireles, and 20 others were shot dead on Tuesday. ‘You can’t have a beer here until you’re 21’, he says sadly, ‘but that boy could buy a semi-automatic rifle when he was 18. That’s insane isn’t it?’
More residents of Uvalde are beaten these days. With their shoulders bowed, heads to the floor, they move from community center to wake and back to the schoolhouse, expressing their grief and condolences.
At the fountain, an old woman weeping plunges into a wooden heart. It’s a memorial to 10-year-old Layla Salazar. “I will love you forever, my beautiful granddaughter,” she writes with trembling hands. The letters swing in all directions. Her husband, Layla’s grandfather, holds her with two arms so she doesn’t fall over.
The local newspaper today is pitch black, with only the date that will mark the city forever: May 24, 2022. Then 18-year-old Salvador Ramos walked into Robb Elementary School, held a class of 6th graders hostage for an hour and started shooting. Parents who wanted to storm into the building were stopped by the police. Some of the bodies were so mutilated that they had to be identified by DNA technology. A student smeared a classmate’s blood on her own body to trick the shooter into thinking she was already dead. Ramos was killed by the police.
“My cousin worked here for seventeen years,” says Garza near the school building. “This should never have happened. I think it’s a shame that teenagers can buy such heavy weapons without a license.’ He almost trips over the thick cables that are scattered all over the sidewalk. The environment around the school has turned into a media circus of cameras, light installations and producers shouting into microphones.
Before putting down his bunch of white roses, Garza has one more thing to say. “Don’t get me wrong, huh,” he says. “I’m not against guns.”
shootings
Across the United States, gun ownership has flared up again. It was the deadliest school shooting since 2012, when 26 people died in the town of Sandy Hook, including 20 small children. They shouted, just like now, that something like this should never happen again. But it happened often after that. This year alone, there have been 27 shootings at American schools that have left people dead or injured. America is the only country in the world where this happens all the time.
The consequences are enormous. Since 1999, 311,000 students have been involved in a school shooting, according to research by The Washington Post† Of them, 185 were killed, 369 were injured – and then there are the thousands who saw it happen, survived, yet were scarred by it.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden will visit Uvalde. “When the hell are we going to revolt against the gun lobby?” he sighed in a speech this week.
Texas gun laws are some of the most lenient in the country, thanks in part to the gun lobby. In an average year, about 3,600 people die from gun violence in this state. Until September 2021, the gunman still needed a permit to get his weapon, but that obstacle was brushed aside by Texas Governor Greg Abbott last year.
Gun ownership is deeply embedded in the culture of Texas. You hear that again, even now, in Uvalde.
Thoughts and prayers
‘Our children are being slaughtered!’ Menda Meta (54) cries in front of the huge equestrian sports hall where the vigil for the victims is held on Wednesday evening. Inside, those present listen to the pastor who tells that he would not have wanted to get up that morning, so as not to have to face the horrible things that happened in his city. As a child, Meta attended Robb Elementary School herself, as did her children.
Like Pete Garza, Menda Meta does not speak out against gun ownership. “I have three in my bedroom,” she says. She taught her daughter to hunt pigeons and rabbits when she was 15. “We eat here what we kill. That’s Texas culture.’
But the semi-automatic guns that teens in Texas can acquire without a license and without a background check: those are a different story.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Abbott are also in attendance. Meg can’t face it, she says. “These men send their own children safely to private schools. Their children don’t suffer from this kind of shooting. We’re going to die here, not them! They’re always talking about thoughts and prayersbut we want them to change gun laws.”
gun lobby
Many residents of Uvalde are in favor of carrying weapons. They want to be able to defend themselves when necessary and they want to be able to hunt. But they also want measures: control, limits, permits. A majority of Americans agree. And in the rest of Texas, there’s a small majority for it, too. But Republican politicians in Texas are refusing.
Even after the massacre this week, they don’t want to talk about changing gun laws. Supported by conservative media and the gun lobby organization NRA, they continue to invoke the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which enshrines the right to own and carry a gun.
“As a state and society, we must do more for mental health,” Governor Abbott said during a news conference on Wednesday. This is the common retort from conservative America: to push for more psychological help to prevent new massacres. But in April, Abbott himself cut $211 million from the Texas mental health budget.
Abbott is a close friend of the NRA, which supports his reelection. “Abbott has signed more than 20 pro-gun bills,” the NRA proudly wrote in a statement of support.
This weekend Abbott will address many thousands of gun owners at the annual NRA convention in Houston, 450 kilometers away. Because of the shooting, he will no longer do that live, but in a video message. Senator Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump will be there to give a speech. A message there will be: if teachers also carried weapons, it could not get as out of hand as in Uvalde.
Broken heart
‘You hear those sounds here too’, says Ebanni Esquibel (15), a student at another school in Uvalde. All schools were closed for safety reasons while the shooting was underway. For hours Esquibel was locked up with her classmates. ‘Our teacher asked us if we would like it if they also carried weapons. Most students said yes. Then the perpetrator could be shot more quickly.’
Esquibel disagrees. When she herself was the age of the victims, she also attended Robb Elementary School. Among the victims was her old teacher, 46-year-old Irma Garcia. “She was sweet, and funny, and she loved Queen’s music. She taught me to write good essays.’ On Thursday, Miss Garcia’s husband also died of a heart attack, according to his family from ‘a broken heart’. Four children have lost both their parents.
Esquibel has suffered from survivors guilt, she says, while behind her the visitors of the vigil pour out. They are met with lemonade and quesadillas. “I can’t bear the fact that I just saw my mother again that day, but the kids in that elementary school will never do that again.”