[MUSIC FADES IN]
Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, May 25th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today."
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[SOMBER MUSIC]
Nineteen children and two adults are dead after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday. Others were injured, some seriously. The gunman was 18 years old. He was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was working nearby. The gunman is also suspected of shooting his grandmother before going to the school. He reportedly, legally purchased two rifles and ammunition last week. President Biden addressed the nation after the killings.
[START THE WHITE HOUSE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
President Joe Biden: As a nation, we have to ask, when, in God's name, are we gonna stand up to the gun lobby? When, in God's name, are we going to do what we all know in our gut needs to be done? It's been 3,448 days, 10 years, since I stood up at a high school in Connecticut, a grade school in Connecticut where another gunman massacred 26 people, including 20 first graders, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Since then, there've been over 900 incidents of gunfire reported on school grounds.
[END THE WHITE HOUSE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, also responded to the shootings.
[START NEWSNATION ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Greg Abbott: When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know that they're going to be able to pick their child up when that school day ends. And there are families who are in mourning right now. And the state of Texas is in mourning with them, for the reality that these parents are not going to be able to pick up their children.
[END NEWSNATION ARCHIVAL CLIP]
We're only beginning to learn the stories of the victims, as their families and people in the community grieve and remember them. One was fourth-grade teacher, Eva Mireles. She was married with a child of her own. A parent of one her students remembers her as "a beautiful person and dedicated teacher," someone who went above and beyond for her students.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Some of the victims were as young as nine or ten years old. Their families were waiting for hours for any news at a civic center in town. Reporters said you could hear grieving families from the parking lot.
This is one of the worst school shootings in American history. It stands out both for the number of people killed and how young most of the victims were. It's the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost ten years ago. That state's Senator Chris Murphy spoke on the Senate floor yesterday, just hours after the shooting.
[START SENATOR MURPHY YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Chris Murphy: This isn't inevitable. These kids weren't unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day.
[END SENATOR MURPHY YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Murphy was newly elected to the Senate when the shooting at Sandy Hook happened. In the years since, he's advocated for gun safety bills. He called on his colleagues to do something.
[START SENATOR MURPHY YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Chris Murphy: I am here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.
[END SENATOR MURPHY YOUTUBE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Murphy repeatedly asked his colleagues, "What are we doing?" At this point, not even halfway into 2022, there have been more than 200 mass shootings in America.
Jennifer Mascia: I kind of look back over the last 10 years and realize that not much has changed.
Jennifer Mascia is a journalist at "The Trace," which covers gun violence. We asked her to reflect on what legislation's been proposed since Sandy Hook.
Mascia: A few months after Sandy hook, Congress did try to implement universal background checks because almost a quarter of our gun sales don't necessitate background checks. So that was seen as, you know, the lowest common denominator sort of, uh, legislation, not too controversial. It didn't pass, by just a few votes.
Forty-six Senators, including five Democrats, voted against that bill in 2013. And since then, Mascia says it's fallen on individual states to come up with their own rules. Democratic-led states have by and large passed stronger gun laws. Republican-led states have largely relaxed gun laws.
Mascia: Your state's gun law is only as strong as the closest state that has a weak gun law. So, I'm in New York, Pennsylvania has much weaker gun laws. Ohio has weaker gun laws. Somebody could easily drive into those states from New York and get a gun.
Mascia says after the Parkland, Florida, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, there were changes made. Fifty new state gun laws went on the books, including in fourteen states with Republican governors. They included bans on bump stocks that make guns fire faster, and tools for authorities to disarm violent people. But nationally, progress has been slow. Many Republicans prefer to turn the focus away from laws restricting guns. Yesterday on "Newsmax," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said we should arm adults who work in schools.
[START NEWSMAX ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Ken Paxton: Having, potentially, teachers and other administrators who have gone through training and who are armed, because first responders typically can't get there in time to prevent a shooting. It's just not possible unless you have a police officer on every campus, which for a lot of these schools is almost impossible.
[END NEWSMAX ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Paxton won his runoff primary race in Texas yesterday. On Friday, the NRA is scheduled to hold a leadership forum in Houston. President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and Governor Abbott are still listed as speakers as of this morning. The NRA is not what it was 10 years ago, when Sandy Hook happened. It's going through legal trouble and leadership questions. Still, Mascia says, "Don't underestimate the influence of its philosophy."
Mascia: NRA-ism survives even if the NRA is weak. Whether the NRA has an outsized voice in our culture still or not, the NRA's message has become part of American society for better or worse.
Next, Congressional Democrats are trying to push forward on a vote for stronger background checks for gun buyers. All signs point to there being significant Republican opposition. It may be true that not a lot has changed over the years as far as federal law, despite polls showing public support for certain gun-control measures like background checks. But it's not correct to say nothing has happened. Year after year, more mass shootings happen. Families of victims have turned into full-time advocates. And politicians have voted and gone on record as being in favor of, or against, restrictions on guns. Now we have another shooting, another set of funerals, and again, our elected officials will have to put into writing whether they think something should change or not.
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
It's a difficult day in America, as we think about why violence happens and what we as a country will do about it.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Today also marks two years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. His killing, which happened in the first few months of the pandemic, sparked national protests.
[START NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
[SHOUTING, BANGING OF A DRUM]
Protestor: What do we want?
Crowd: Justice.
Protestor: When do we want it?
Crowd: Now.
Protestor: What do we want?
Crowd: Justice.
[END NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Demonstrators marched against racism and called for big changes to policing. At the time, Joe Biden was running for president. He told lawmakers to move quickly on overhauling law enforcement.
[START NBC NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
President Joe Biden: I call on the Congress to act this month on measures that would be the first step in this direction, starting with real police reform.
[END NBC NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
He spoke about a bill to outlaw chokeholds. He called for more accountability and oversight. But two years later "The Washington Post" reports how Biden's rhetoric has changed. Here's the president this month at a memorial for law-enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty.
[START THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
President Joe Biden: Folks, the answer is not to abandon the streets. It's not to choose between safety and equal justice. And we should agree, it's not to defund the police. It's to fund the police. Fund them with the resources, the training they need to protect our communities and themselves, and restore trust among the police and the people.
[END THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
A political analyst tells "The Post," Biden is largely limited to symbolic stands on overhauling law enforcement because he doesn't have the votes in Congress for sweeping and lasting reform. Lawmakers failed to move forward on a package of changes called the "George Floyd Justice in Policing Act." So instead, Biden is leaning on his executive powers. Today he's expected to sign an executive order that will severely limit chokeholds, limit the use of "no-knock warrants," create a database tracking officers fired for misconduct, require body cameras, and restrict transfers of military hardware to local police. But the executive order only covers federal law enforcement. Local law enforcement doesn't have to follow it.
A lot of police reform activists worry that the momentum that was built up two years ago now seems to be lost. Two "Washington Post" reporters wrote a book, to capture the rise of that momentum and what happened in George Floyd's life before the world learned his name. Robert Samuels and Tolu Olorunnipa were on "NPR's" "Fresh Air." Olorunnipa said, Floyd's family is frustrated with the lack of progress.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
[START FRESH AIR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Tolu Olorunnipa: This has become just another political fight in which there's a stalemate and nothing gets done. And that's something that the family has been pretty upset about and pretty understandably distraught over, that even though it seemed like there was this momentum and that something would happen to honor Floyd's legacy and to make sure that this kind of thing did not happen again, all of that seemed to have evaporated very quickly.
[END FRESH AIR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
You can find more coverage of the Texas shooting, of George Floyd, and other stories, including yesterday's key primary results. All of that is in the Apple News app. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]