Photo: Hayk_Shalunts/Glynnis Jones/Shutterstock
He was no "lone wolf."
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on May 27, 2022
At around 11:32 am on May 24, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who lived in Uvalde, Texas, opened fire in Robb Elementary School just two days before students were due to start their summer vacation.
After arguing with his grandmother, with whom he had been living, he shot her with an AR-15 assault rifle that he legally purchased, drove to Robb Elementary School, and carried out a gruesome shooting that killed 21 people — 19 children, and two teachers.
The news describes Ramos as a “lone gunman,” but that’s far from the truth.
Uvalde shooter, Salvador Ramos, did not act alone.
Men like Ramos are propped up by politicians who have spent the decades since the Columbine High School massacre failing to protect other children.
The United States has an issue that has been ignored by Republicans for far too long, and the issue is gun control.
Gun control is something that has repeatedly been refused in the United States but has been proven to work in other nations all around the world.
It could have prevented the deaths of those 21 people at Robb Elementary School, and the many other lives lost in mass shootings.
Politicians that refuse to vote for gun reform are to blame.
Unfortunately, the USA’s political system operates under a bipartisan system under which we have been conditioned to loathe each other which such intensity that either side will blindly disagree with whatever the opposition believes while the people of the United States die in the crossfire, literally.
According to various polls conducted by legitimate and reliable research organizations, a whopping 90% of people in the country want universal background checks on gun purchases — the bare minimum of gun control that our country lacks.
Yet, the push for gun control has become a shout into a void in Congress.
Politicians were voted into office to reflect the values of the citizens who elected them but in America none of this matters. Instead, opposition has become a bigger priority than unity.
There are many ways to prevent school shootings but gun control is the most imperative issue to address.
“This is a mental health issue,” screams the collective hive mind of the right, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Abbott is the father of one daughter.
If that were the case, then the likely resolution is to aid the funding of mental health programs, expand them, and make them more accessible and affordable to the people who need them, right?
Yet, in April, Governor Abbott cut $211 million in funding from the department that would oversee such programs.
Even then, had Abbott allowed these programs to receive funding, it would still be possible for someone accessing mental health treatment to purchase a firearm and shoot up a school.
“Spare me the bulls--- about mental illness. We don't have any more mental illness than any other country in the world,” said Senator Chris Murphy when addressing his fellow senators after the shooting.
“You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we don't – we're not an outlier on mental illness.”
Murphy is a father of two children.
Even if it were true that the United States had, by some anomaly, the most mentally unstable people on the planet, that’s an even bigger reason to put these murder weapons out of their reach.
It’s not propaganda, as the Texas senator who has received $176,000 in donations from the NRA, Senator Ted Cruz, would have you believe.
Senator Cruz is a father of two children.
The issue isn’t political. What is political about the deaths of children?
It’s not mental health, it’s not violent video games, and it’s not that there aren’t enough guns.
The answer isn’t arming teachers, training kids, bullet-proof backpacks, or pleading to God to root out evil.
Thoughts and prayers will not prevent school shootings.
“Gun control laws do work, by the way,” talk show host Jimmy Kimmel announced in his statement regarding the Uvalde shooting, referring back to the Dunblane school shooting in Scotland in 1996 that prompted the government to pass gun control laws.
There hasn’t been a school shooting in Scotland since.
“These are our children, and our representatives are supposed to represent us,” Kimmel says, shouting much of the same anger and disgust with the politicians who would much rather stand by and watch children be murdered than do something.
Kimmel is a father of four children, two of which are of elementary school age.
“There’s 50 senators, right now, that refuse to vote on H.R. 8, which is a background check rule,” said Golden State Warrior’s head coach Steve Kerr. “50 senators are going to hold us hostage.”
Kerr is a father of three children.
Our politicians would rather stand by, unaffected, while hundreds of millions of Americans beg for their children’s lives.
They would rather fill their pockets with money than pay a penny to save a child.
They would rather force you to have children than protect them when they’re out in the world.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.