Once Biden’s motorcade left the school, law enforcement officials allowed a limited number of people at a time to walk up to the memorial in front of the school sign. Until this point, access had mostly been restricted to friends, classmates and relatives of the victims.
Aguilera said her view of Robb Elementary, just a few houses up the road has been obstructed by crowds of media vans and now of people.
“When all this circus goes away and I sit in my front porch and I see the school again, it’s going to be a really sad situation,” she said.
– Rafael Carranza
UVALDE, Texas – Onlookers welcomed President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden with cheers and applause on Sunday as he arrived to pay his respects to 21 victims gunned down at Robb Elementary School.
Before his arrival, dozens of people made their way to the school, which remains under restricted access. They watched as the Biden’s walked up to makeshift memorial site and the first lady placed bouquet of white roses in front of the school sign blanketed with flowers, wreaths, and candles.
But the crowd began to jeer as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott arrived to the memorial site, just moments after Biden. Many in the crowed even began to boo him loudly, while others called out to the governor to take action.
“Governor Abbott, our community needs help sir. We need help,” Ben Gonzales, a Uvalde resident, called out.
“Do something,” another man added. “We need change, our children don’t deserve this,” someone else yelled out behind metal barricades.
Biden spent about 20 minute on the ground, speaking to law enforcement and walking through the wreaths and the flowers laid out at the school, before his motorcade made his way to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced Sunday that it is reviewing the delayed police response to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead in one of the worst campus attacks in U.S. history.
The federal action was requested by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, Justice spokesman Anthony Coley said.
“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events," Coley said, adding that the evaluation will led by Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing.
“As with prior Justice Department after-action reviews of mass shootings and other critical incidents, this assessment will be fair, transparent, and independent. The Justice Department will publish a report with its findings at the conclusion of its review.”
U.S. Rep Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, would not vote yes on a national red flag law, he said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Red flag laws are measures that allow police or family members to get a court order that temporarily confiscates firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves.
"I think there's a lot of problems with red flag laws, especially at a national level," Cranshaw said.
"When it comes to criminal law, that really should be democratically decided at the local and state level, but, even so, you have to look at these and wonder what the actual purpose is," he added.
Cranshaw also said that he would not support a red flag law in Texas, adding that "what we are essentially trying to do with a red flag law is enforce the law before the law has been broken."
The Bidens spent about 10 minutes talking with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin and others before heading to Robb Elementary School, where they arrived at about 12:15 p.m. Sunday.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden laid a bouquet of white roses at the makeshift memorial in front of the welcome sign outside of the school.
They paused in front, as if to share a moment of silence.
The president then began meeting with grieving school officials and parents, continuing one of his roles as consoler in chief.
– Candy Woodall
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-Texas, who called on Gov. Gregg Abbott to hold a special session at the Texas legislature after the Uvalde shooting, said Sunday that he sees more bipartisan support for stricter gun laws.
"I've had other colleagues, Republican colleagues, who at this point don't want to be identified but have said we need to raise it to 21," Gutierrez said about raising the age limit to purchase a gun on CNN's "State of the Union."
"Those are the kinds of things that make sense: red flag laws, waiting periods, making sure that we have a more significant robust background check," he added.
He said on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that he's not "blaming anyone for what happened," but there needs to be "accountability as to what happened, who was there at what time, and which agencies take operational control when."
Local police have faced criticism for staying outside the school and not confronting the gunman, even as parents begged them to enter the building and students inside called 911.
– Merdie Nzanga
An optimistic Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that a spirit of bipartisanship after the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, could break through a 30-year logjam in Congress and produce real movement on gun control.
“I’ve seen more Republican interest in coming to the table and talking this time than at any other moment since Sandy Hook,” he said.
Though Murphy said he knows Republicans won’t support everything he wants, like banning assault weapons, there’s middle ground on red flag laws, background checks, safe storage of guns and more.
“I think we can get something done, but we don’t have a lot of time,” he said.
Murphy said lawmakers are looking for “an old school compromise” to tighten gun laws so only law-abiding citizens can have them, while also investing in school security and mental health care.
“Parents in this country and kids are desperate for us to do something. They’re frightened, they’re anxious, and we will just add to their anxiety if nothing happens again,” he said.
– Candy Woodall
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said proponents of the Second Amendment are the ones who need to step up to reform gun laws, adding that raising the age for purchasing a gun to 21 is a good place to start.
We "have to be the ones putting forward reasonable solutions to gun violence," the Illinois lawmaker said Sunday on ABC News' "This Week."
"I think that raising the age of gun purchase to 21 is a no brainer," he said, citing Florida, where the age to purchase a long gun was raised from 18 to 21 following the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in which 17 people died.
Kinzinger said, as a gun rights supporter and owner of an AR-15 rifle, "this kind of wild West" where people "carry a gun around because it looks cool" does not help defend gun rights.
Kinzinger floated the idea of creating a special license for owners of weapons like the AR-15, which the gunman in Uvalde used to kill 19 people.
"I think we need to have this real discussion," he said.
– Katie Wadington
UVALDE, Texas — Nancy Sutton spreads out the photographs of the girl she knew so well: Ellie Garcia in first grade. Ellie in her basketball uniform. Ellie, smiling, a white bow in her hair.
Sutton, a professional school portrait photographer, has taken photos of every child killed at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, along with the two teachers. In fact, she’s taken pictures of virtually every single student who has attended classes at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for the past 20 years.
Since Tuesday, the Suttons' pictures of the dead have been published on newspaper front pages and on TV, and rocketed around the world via social media, providing a lens to the country's worst mass shootings and the means by which the world could put faces to the names of the dead.
“Look at them, just babies,” she says of the photos before her. “Just babies. So young.”
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