Texas shooting: “It happened in Texas and where will it happen next?”, Asked a top UNICEF official.
Texas:
The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) asked on Wednesday after 19 children were killed in school shootings in Texas: How many more children will die before leaders work?
“Tragedy after tragedy, shooting after shooting, young life after youth: how many more children will die before government leaders work to keep children and their schools safe?” UNICEF Executive Director Katherine Russell asked. “Because this horror will continue until they do.”
He said the children who were attacked and killed in Uvalade, Texas, were going to school, a place outside their home where they should be safe.
The 19 children, a teacher and a school staff member who left for school in the morning will never return to their families, Russell said, adding that many more who witnessed the killings will carry “emotional and psychological trauma”. The rest of their lives.
“It happened in Texas,” he said. “Where will this happen next? This year, we have already seen horrific attacks on schools in Afghanistan, Ukraine, the United States, West Africa and beyond.”
This comes amid growing criticism of the constitutionally protected U.S. gun law, especially those that allow the sale of automatic weapons to young people under the age of 21.
On Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott confirmed that the Texas school shooter used an AR-15 assault rifle and posted a plan of attack on Facebook. However, social media giant Abbott has denied allegations that an elementary school gunman in Texas publicly posted about the attack on his platform.
More than half of Americans support tougher gun violence laws, The Hill reported, citing a survey conducted in New York and Texas this month.
According to the American publication, 54 percent of those polled in the CBS News-YouGov poll on Wednesday said they would like to see stricter gun control laws.
A total of 30 percent said they want gun laws to remain the same, and 16 percent said they want gun laws to be less stringent, the report added.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published from a syndicated feed.)
