{"id":22634,"date":"2022-05-29T06:28:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T06:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=22634"},"modified":"2022-05-29T06:28:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T06:28:19","slug":"biden-to-visit-uvalde-amid-too-much-fear-too-much-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/05\/29\/biden-to-visit-uvalde-amid-too-much-fear-too-much-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden to visit Uvalde amid \u2018Too much fear, too much grief\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joe Biden lamented \u201ctoo much violence, too much fear, too much grief\u201d after the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where police face intensifying scrutiny for waiting outside the classroom where a teenage gunman with an assault rifle killed 19 children and two teachers.<\/p>\n

The US president and first lady, Jill Biden, plan to travel to the small southern Texas city on Sunday.<\/p>\n

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And on Saturday, the vice-president, Kamala Harris,\u00a0called for a ban\u00a0on such military-style assault weapons for the general public, while she\u00a0attended the last funeral\u00a0of the 10 people killed just two weeks ago in a\u00a0racist attack\u00a0on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, carried out with a similar gun.<\/p>\n

The center of Uvalde was busy but hushed on Saturday afternoon as a long line of people lined up quietly in heat approaching 100F, waiting to place flowers and other tributes at the hurriedly-created memorial of crosses set up for those killed five days ago at nearby Robb elementary school.<\/p>\n

An ambulance was standing by and a state trooper assisted members of the public who came to mourn.<\/p>\n

But as well as grief there was anger that has been simmering since Tuesday, when local police waited at least an hour, while young children trapped with the gunman repeatedly called 911 and parents outside pleaded with officers to go in, before federal agents arrived and shot the 18-year-old local man dead.<\/p>\n

The police department specifically assigned to oversee school security in the area, led by Pedro Arredondo, appeared\u00a0not to have followed\u00a0state protocols advising that an \u201cofficer\u2019s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\"Biden<\/div>
Biden speaks at the commencement ceremony at the University of Delaware in Newark on Saturday.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The head of the Texas department of public safety, Steve McCraw, admitted on Friday afternoon that \u201cof course it was the wrong decision\u201d for local officers to wait to enter the classroom.<\/p>\n

And Texas\u2019s governor, Greg Abbott,\u00a0said he felt\u00a0\u201cmisled\u201d and was livid after several days of conflicting accounts about the law enforcement response.<\/p>\n

Biden spoke about the tragedy in Uvalde during a commencement speech he gave on Saturday morning at the University of Delaware, his alma mater.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I speak, those parents are literally preparing to bury their children. In the United States of America. Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,\u201d said Biden and called the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings acts of \u201cevil\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the face of such destructive forces, we have to stand stronger. We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of our people, and of our children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The US has received increasing criticism from the\u00a0international community\u00a0and\u00a0gun safety advocates\u00a0domestically over continual mass shootings and the\u00a0failure of lawmakers to pass gun control\u00a0laws that could mitigate them.<\/p>\n

Biden and fellow Democrats have been\u00a0repeatedly out-maneuvered\u00a0in the last decade by Senate Republicans, many\u00a0of whom\u00a0are\u00a0backed by\u00a0the powerful gun lobby.<\/p>\n

Harris\u00a0called on\u00a0the Congress to act, saying: \u201cWe are not sitting around, waiting to figure out what the solution looks like. We know what works on this. It includes \u2013 let\u2019s have an assault weapons ban.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Uvalde, Alfred Garza was among several parents who gathered outside the elementary school after reports that a shooting was under way and witnessed officers delaying a move to storm in. He tried not to get in the way. Other parents\u00a0begged\u00a0officers to take action.<\/p>\n

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\"harris<\/div>
Kamala Harris lays flowers at a memorial at the Tops supermarket, scene of the Buffalo shooting.<\/span>\u00a0Photograph: Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His daughter Amerie Jo, 10, was\u00a0among those shot dead\u00a0before federal agents arrived and killed the gunman, Salvador Ramos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t take a genius to figure out that it just took too long to get in there and, you know, had they gotten there sooner, and someone would have taken immediate action, we might have more of those children here today, including my daughter,\u201d he\u00a0told CNN.<\/p>\n

Warning signs about Ramos had been evident prior to his attack,\u00a0with reports\u00a0of threatening posts on social media and aggressive interactions with teenage peers.<\/p>\n

But he was able legally to arm himself with assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition shortly after he turned 18 this year.<\/p>\n

His mother, Adriana Martinez, gave a short\u00a0television interview\u00a0earlier in the week, saying in Spanish: \u201cI have no words to say. I don\u2019t know what he was thinking,\u201d adding: \u201cHe had his reasons for doing what he did. Please don\u2019t judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

story by gloria oladipo<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Biden lamented \u201ctoo much violence, too much fear, too much grief\u201d after the latest US mass shooting as he prepared to visit Uvalde, where police face intensifying scrutiny for waiting outside the classroom where a teenage gunman with an assault rifle killed 19 children and two teachers. The US president and first lady, Jill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[5497,9747,183,5304,7953,8348,5178,6513,287,9331,6693,2808,6083,12326,10309,6576,5241,11700,8057,2944,7896,3269,6789,9807,1647,8584,11491,11166,10954,11493,6277,2471,12005,11398,3114,9515,10342,12329,5572,6737,990,10574,1565,421,3805,5646,12938,2213,6575,6736,5655,8501,11259,5349,10480,10041,7972,6065,6741,5355,11906,5020,6262,5353,6584,9262,214,6348,11331,6747,5724,594,5140],"class_list":["post-22634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-ambulance","tag-ammunition","tag-assault","tag-attack","tag-attacker","tag-ban","tag-biden","tag-buffalo","tag-children","tag-city","tag-congress","tag-daughter","tag-dead","tag-decade","tag-delaware","tag-democrats","tag-died","tag-evil","tag-fear","tag-first-lady","tag-funeral","tag-genius","tag-grief","tag-gun","tag-gun-control","tag-gunman","tag-harris","tag-innocent","tag-international","tag-interview","tag-jill-biden","tag-joe-biden","tag-judge","tag-kamala","tag-kamala-harris","tag-killed","tag-law","tag-laws","tag-military","tag-mourn","tag-new-york","tag-newark","tag-pedro","tag-police","tag-president","tag-priority","tag-racist","tag-ramos","tag-republicans","tag-school","tag-security","tag-senate","tag-shot","tag-social-media","tag-spanish","tag-speech","tag-storm","tag-supermarket","tag-teachers","tag-texas","tag-the-general","tag-the-vice-president","tag-tragedy","tag-trapped","tag-travel","tag-united-states","tag-university","tag-us","tag-us-president","tag-uvalde","tag-weapons","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}