Uvalde News: Biden Mourns With Survivors During Texas Visit

 

Uvalde News: Biden Mourns With Survivors During Texas Visit

 

The president and first lady attended Mass and are visiting families in Uvalde. The Department of Justice will open an investigation into the law enforcement response.

 

May 29, 2022

Edgar Sandoval, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Karen Zraick and Jonathan Weisman

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/29/us/shooting-texas-school-uvalde#uvalde-biden

 

President Biden mourned with families in Uvalde.

UVALDE, Texas — For the second time in less than two weeks, President Biden on Sunday touched down in an American community consumed by grief, embracing survivors, laying a bouquet and consoling families of victims of another mass shooting.

 

Outside Robb Elementary School, where 19 children and two teachers were gunned down last week, Mr. Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, stopped in front of life-size photos of the victims, placing their hands on the photos and reading their names. As Mr. Biden wiped away a tear, some spectators let it be known that in addition to empathy, they expected action.

 

“We need help!” one person shouted as Mr. Biden and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas approached the memorial. “Do something!” others pleaded as the president left Sacred Heart Catholic Church later in the day. “We will,” Mr. Biden replied.

 

The trips offering condolences by Mr. Biden are becoming a common, solemn ritual of the presidency. Just 12 days before the first couple laid down a bouquet for those slaughtered in Uvalde, they observed a moment of silence at a memorial near the site of a racist massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo.

 

The frequency of the shootings has spurred a new round of negotiations over gun control measures in Congress, even as Washington has been unable to make changes since the 2012 slaughter of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Conn.

 

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who is leading negotiations with five Republicans, expressed cautious optimism on Sunday that Congress could enact some combination of enhanced background checks for gun buyers, mental health assistance and grants to states to enact so-called red flag laws to help law enforcement remove weapons from those deemed mentally unfit to have them.

 

Mr. Murphy said negotiators were also looking at the fact that the gunmen in Buffalo and Uvalde were legally allowed to buy military-style rifles at age 18.

 

“I don’t want to talk more in detail about that, but there’s a subset of ideas out there about how you may be a little bit more careful about quickly transferring weapons to teenagers,” he said, declining to elaborate.

 

The lawmakers are on a tight schedule. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he would bring a bill up for a vote in two weeks. That bill will be either a compromise gun measure negotiated by the group or a strict gun safety measure already passed by the House.

 

After Uvalde, Republicans have said they want to do something, at least on issues of school security and mental health, and Democrats will demand at least stronger background checks at gun shows and on internet gun bazaars. Many Democrats believe that Congress should go even further, that nothing short of banning the assault-style rifles used in the two recent attacks and in many other mass shootings would reduce their frequency. But Mr. Murphy said that even a less encompassing bill would be worth passing.

 

Such compromise, he said, would be exercising a “muscle we just haven’t used.”

 

“If you start working the muscle out, and frankly you start proving to Republicans that the sky doesn’t fall if they change gun laws, we might be able to do other things in the future more easily,” Mr. Murphy said.

 

Even a modest gun measure is by no means guaranteed. The right wing of the Republican Party has already mobilized to block any bill, on background checks or red flag laws. Representative Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, said Sunday on CNN that he would not back a red flag law, either nationally or in his home state.

 

“What you’re essentially trying to do with a red flag law is enforce the law before the law is broken,” he said, “and that’s a really difficult thing to do. It’s difficult to assess whether somebody’s a threat.”

 

But the back-to-back shootings have fueled anxiety among many Americans frustrated by Washington’s inability to enact changes to curb gun violence. In a sign of a nation on edge, 10 people were injured at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn early Sunday morning when a loud noise heard on the street outside caused throngs of people to stampede out of fear that it was another gunman. Six people were injured during a shooting in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Saturday.

 

Residents of Uvalde on Sunday commended the visit by the president, who is no stranger to tragedy after losing a daughter and his first wife to a car accident and one son to brain cancer. But several of them said they were hoping for more than empathy.

 

“I told him to ban AR-15s, and I told him he needed to train his cops,” said Leonard Sandoval, whose grandson, Xavier, was killed in the shooting, after making the honor roll.

 

Mr. Sandoval was just one relative to meet Mr. Biden over the course of roughly three hours on Sunday. He expressed his anger over the fraught response to the shooting by law enforcement, who did not stop the gunman until well over an hour after he walked into the school.

 

“The cops are not really trained,” Mr. Sandoval said. Mr. Biden told him he would invest federal funds to ensure a similar response would not happen again.

 

“I think it’s all just wind coming out of him,” he said. The president asked Mr. Sandoval to have faith. “He said, ‘God’s going to take care of it,’” Mr. Sandoval said. “I know God is going to. But you all need to do what you need to do.”

 

The Justice Department said on Sunday that it would initiate a review of the steps law enforcement took to respond to the shooting. The review is not a criminal investigation, and the department is expected to issue a review of its findings. The protracted police response came despite some children inside the classroom calling 911 for help, raising questions about whether lives could have been saved if officials had acted sooner.

 

Mr. Biden met with law enforcement officials while in Uvalde. The White House did not say which departments he met with.

 

The families of Uvalde’s victims were already assembled when Mr. Biden arrived to meet with them at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio, who witnessed the gathering and presided over the Mass beforehand, said he was heartened by seeing how the Bidens connected with the families. “I noticed they were making them laugh with the stories they were sharing,” he said. “They were very good listeners to the people. They listened to them.”

 

As he exited Sacred Heart, Mr. Biden told onlookers that his administration would take action to prevent another mass shooting. But the White House has acknowledged there is little Mr. Biden can do without Congress. And after grieving with families in Buffalo this month, the president himself acknowledged that he had few options to implement gun control through executive action.

 

The White House is also wary of inserting the president, who is suffering from low approval numbers, into negotiations that are already polarizing by nature, only to have reports of his involvement alienate members of Congress, according to an administration official.

 

But while visiting the memorial outside Robb Elementary, Ben Gonzales demanded that Mr. Biden and Mr. Abbott enact changes that would prevent future shootings.

 

“I was yelling, ‘We need change,’” said Mr. Gonzales, 35, a merchant mariner who lives nearby and has four boys who go to different schools. “We need help. Uvalde County needs help. I yelled that our children are not safe.”

 

Around the town, many people wore T-shirts with messages like “Uvalde Strong” and local businesses displayed messages like “Pray for Uvalde.” Makeshift memorials dotted the main streets, including one of 21 empty chairs for those killed, set up outside a day care center.

 

There was also some anger. Jennifer Morales, 29, a truck driver from Uvalde who now lives in Houston, held up a sign that said “UPD COWARDS” along one street, in a reference to the police. (While the Uvalde Police Department was involved in the response, authorities have said the school district police chief was in charge at the scene.)

 

Ms. Morales’s mother, Sandy Morales, 51, held one made by another daughter that said, “Fix This, Joe!!”

 

Roughly 1,800 miles northeast, residents of Buffalo were still grappling with the overwhelming pain of the racist massacre that had prompted similar calls for change. A day before Mr. Biden’s visit to Uvalde, Vice President Kamala Harris attended the funeral for 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, the oldest of the Buffalo victims. Ms. Harris said the shootings had shown the need for an assault weapons ban and expanded background checks.

 

Vern Hall, 61, who lives just outside Buffalo and had known Ms. Whitfield since he was 15, could not understand how 18-year-olds were able to easily buy the guns that were used in the recent shootings. He said the shooting in Uvalde had added to the pain already felt by those still processing in Buffalo.

 

“Unfortunately, what it did is it kind of took away from the whole light Buffalo was getting at the time,” Mr. Hall said. “Now the light is gone so to speak.”

 

Other residents in Uvalde said Mr. Biden’s presence in the town could help with national healing, even if it does not lead to legislation.

 

“The best thing is empathy right now,” said Henry Becerra, a pastor of City Church International in San Antonio, who stopped at Robb Elementary on Sunday morning. “The focus should be on the children and families.”

 

Edgar Sandoval and Karen Zraick reported from Uvalde, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jonathan Weisman from Washington. Katie Benner contributed reporting from Washington.