Barack Obama Addresses Uvalde Shooting Nearly 10 Years After Sandy Hook: ‘Our Country Is Paralyzed’

“Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” former President Barack Obama said in response to the Texas school shooting Tuesday

Barack Obama is mourning the 19 students and two adults who died in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Following the tragedy on Tuesday, the former president shared a statement on Twitter, writing, “Across the country, parents are putting their children to bed, reading stories, singing lullabies—and in the back of their minds, they’re worried about what might happen tomorrow after they drop their kids off at school, or take them to a grocery store or any other public space.”

“Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear. We’re also angry for them,” he continued. “Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.

Initially, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 14 students and their teacher were gunned down in their classroom, but later Tuesday, Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed the death toll had risen to 19 students and two adults, according to CNN. The shooter also shot his grandmother, but she had survived the attack.

According to Abbott, the shooter, identified as Uvalde resident Salvador Ramos, is dead. The shooter opened fire at Robb Elementary School at about 11:30 a.m. after abandoning his vehicle, and it is believed police killed him.

“It’s long past time for action, any kind of action. And it’s another tragedy—a quieter but no less tragic one—for families to wait another day,” Obama, 60, added of the horrific attack. “May God bless the memory of the victims, and in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.”

Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 25, 2022

In December last year, Obama recalled the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, calling it “one of the darkest days of his presidency.”

“Today we remember the children and adults who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the families who have endured so much grief,” Obama said on Twitter on the anniversary of the shooting.

In a follow-up post, Obama added, “The best way to honor them — the only way that really matters — is to fight this epidemic of gun violence and prevent even more senseless death and suffering. We can, and must, do more.”

During his speech addressing the Uvalde shooting on Tuesday, President Joe Biden also mentioned the Sandy Hook tragedy.

“I had hoped when I became president I would not have to do this again, another massacre in Uvalde, Texas,” Biden, 79, said. “An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third, and fourth graders. How many scores of little children who witnessed what happened, see their friends die, as if they’re in a battlefield for God’s sake.”

“It’s been 10 years since I stood up at a grade school in Connecticut, where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” he later added.

The Newtown Action Alliance, a gun violence prevention organization launched after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, also issued a statement on Twitter saying, “We are devastated. Our hearts are breaking for Robb Elementary & Uvalde families & community. We are angry. These shootings are preventable but those whose stood with the NRA after Sandy Hook nearly 10 years ago did absolutely nothing to prevent these tragedies. We need change.”

The mass shooting comes less than two weeks after an alleged white supremacist killed 10 people inside a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Authorities have said the Buffalo shooting was a hate crime in which the suspect targeted Black people.

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