Gunman posted on Facebook before attack, governor says Texas governor Greg Abbott said at a press conference moments ago that the shooter posted on Facebook three times before his attack. In the first, posted 30 minutes before going to the school, he said he would shoot his grandmother. The second said, “I shot my grandmother.” And the third, posted about 15 minutes before the attack, said: “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.” Abbott also said the shooter’s grandmother had called the police before he shot her. Most Americans support stronger gun laws, poll finds Most US residents support stronger gun laws, but are not confident that lawmakers will take action in the wake of the Texas tragedy, Reuters reports. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the Texas school massacre found that: Out of 940 respondents, 84% said they supported background checks for all firearm sales. Seventy percent said they backed “red flag” laws, which allow authorities to confiscate guns from people considered a threat. Seventy-two percent said they would support raising the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 201. Most said they do not believe Congress will act, with only 35% saying they were “confident that US lawmakers would strengthen gun laws this year”, compared to 49% who said they were not confident. The Uvalde tragedy was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history and the worst in the US since the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in 2012. After that mass shooting in Connecticut left 20 children dead, there was a push to pass meaningful gun safety reform, but it ultimately fell apart in the Republican-controlled Senate. The messages that the gunman posted on Facebook prior to the attack were private, according to a Facebook spokesperson. Andy Stone told the AP that the 18-year-old shooter’s communications on the platform were “private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy”. Earlier today, the governor, Greg Abbott, said the shooter sent three social media messages – saying he was going to shoot his grandmother, saying he had shot her and then saying he was going to shoot an elementary school. Tributes to the victims More tributes are pouring in for the victims of the shooting, who were mostly 10-year-olds in the same fourth-grade classroom. Here are some of them. Rogelio Torres, 10: Torres has been identified by his family as one of the victims. “Thank you for the prayers and for trying to help find my cousin, it breaks my heart to say my [Rogelio] is now with the angels. I’ll forever miss you and love you my angel,” his cousin wrote on Twitter. Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10: Family members have identified Rodriguez as one of the victims. Her cousin was in the same classroom as her and was also shot and killed. Nevaeh Bravo: Nevaeh Bravo’s cousin Emily Grace Ayala confirmed Bravo’s death on Facebook, writing, “Thank you everyone for the prayers, our Nevaeh has been found! She is flying with the angels above. We love you Nevaeh very much princess! Please everyone continue to keep her parents and our family in your prayers.” Here’s footage of Beto O’Rourke publicly confronting Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, at a press conference earlier today: The Democratic candidate for governor said: You are doing nothing. You are all doing nothing ... This is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything ... This is on you. AR rifle manufacturer faces backlash Hi all - Sam Levin in Los Angeles here, taking over our live coverage. Authorities say that the gun the shooter used was made by the manufacturer, Daniel Defense, and modeled after the US military’s go-to rifle, the AP reports: The Daniel Defense rifle can be classified as an AR-15 type. A key difference between the Daniel Defense rifle and the military version is that the military weapon can switch to fully automatic or fire a three-round burst depending on the model. AR-15-type rifles can be purchased for as little as $400, but the Daniel Defense rifle is on the high-end of around $2,000 or more. These rifles can also be financed, with customers paying less than $100 a month. Photos of the shooter’s guns suggest he also had purchased a battery-powered holographic sight, which allows a shooter to hit targets more quickly, the AP reported. The gunman legally purchased two rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition last week after his 18th birthday, officials say. USA Today reported that Daniel Defense could face years of costly litigation following the shooting, and that the company has ties to military production. The paper noted that Daniel Defense’s name no longer appeared on the list of exhibitors scheduled for the NRA’s annual conference in Texas this week, and a company spokesman told USA Today: “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and community devastated by this evil act.” Interim summary It’s a very busy news day concerning the school shooting in Texas and we’ll continue to keep you up to date. The New York team is handing over to our west coast team now and my colleague Sam Levin will take you through forthcoming news. Here’s where things stand: Joe Biden says he is “sick and tired” of continued mass shootings in the US and access to military-style weapons for youth. Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke confronted Republican governor Greg Abbott at a press conference earlier and shouted that he was “doing nothing” to curb gun violence. Texas governor Greg Abbott said at a press conference that the shooter who killed 21 at the elementary school in Uvalde on Tuesday posted on Facebook three times before his attack. US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that he will not be bringing any gun legislation to a vote in the immediate future, saying he knows that the bills will not pass due to Republican opposition. The retired police officer who was shot and killed while trying to stop the gunman in the racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket on May 14 was awarded the department’s medal of honor at his funeral on Wednesday, as the country processed another massacre at Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two adults, the Associated Press reports. Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia also posthumously promoted Aaron Salter to lieutenant, saying his actions — firing multiple times at the shooter, striking his body armor — bought precious time that allowed others in the store to escape. “Aaron bravely fought evil that day,” Gramaglia said at The Chapel in Getzville, where law enforcement officers from US and Canadian departments Buffalo being on the US northern border] filled a dozen rows. Services were also held for Pearl Young, a 77-year-old grandmother, great-grandmother and substitute teacher who was devoted to her church. Salter and Young were among the 10 Black people killed when a white gunman wearing body armor and a helmet-mounted camera targeted shoppers and workers at Tops Friendly Market, in a predominantly Black neighborhood, on a Saturday afternoon. Three others were injured in the attack, which federal authorities are investigating as a hate crime. The 18-year-old suspect has been charged with murder and is being held without bail. The gunman in Uvalde, Texas, was also 18 and was shot dead by law enforcement. Salter, 55, of Lockport, was working as a security guard at the store in his retirement, a natural move for the community-minded officer with a loud laugh that “would shock your senses” and who chewed bubble gum just as loudly, said retired deputy police commissioner Kimberly Beaty, who worked with Salter. Aaron didn’t come to work to be entertainment, he came to do his job, but we enjoyed watching him do it.” Salter retired from the department in 2018 after nearly 30 years. At least one of his bullets struck the suspect’s armor-plated vest but didn’t pierce it, police said. The Buffalo shooting killed 10 Black people from the neighborhood. How far government can go in controlling access to firearms has been one of the most divisive issues in the United States, Reuters writes. It pits those who say restricting the availability of guns will save lives against those who maintain that guns themselves are not the root cause of mass shootings and that the right to bear arms is protected by the US Constitution. US president Joe Biden urged the US Senate to quickly confirm Steven Dettelbach, his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), whose mission includes enforcing US gun laws. Dettelbach appeared at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Joe Biden sought to reform federal and local policing with a broad executive order on Wednesday, the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd, while goading a seemingly immovable Congress to act on police and gun reform, Reuters writes. The order directs all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct and will use grants to encourage state and local police to restrict the use of chokeholds and neck restraints. It’s a measure of what we can do together to heal the very soul of this nation, to address the profound fear trauma, exhaustion particularly Black Americans have experienced for generations,” the US president said. He had not signed it earlier, he said, because he was hoping Congress would pass a police reform law named after Floyd. The bill collapsed in the US Senate last September under Republican opposition. The White House police order restricts the use of no-knock entries to a limited set of circumstances, such as when an announced entry would pose an imminent threat of physical violence. "Sick and tired of what"s going on" - Biden on mass shootings Joe Biden is speaking at the White House about gun safety, around 24 hours after the appalling shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The US president noted that since he spoke at the White House last night, shortly after he arrived back from his trip to Asia, the death toll in the shooting had risen - now standing at 19 children and two teachers. “I’m sick and tired of what is going on,” Biden said of the latest mass murder, just nine days after another 18-year-old opened fire on members of the public in the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in a racist attack that killed 10 Black people. Biden visited Buffalo after the shooting there and announced moments ago that he and first lady Jill Biden would travel to Uvalde “in the coming days” to offer what comfort they can to “a community in shock and grief and trauma.” “As a nation I think we all must be there for them, everyone,” he said. “And we must ask, when in God’s name will we do what needs to be done to, not completely stop, but fundamentally change the amount of carnage that goes on in this country. To state the obvious, I’m sick and tired, I’m just sick and tired of what is going on, what continues to go on,” he added. Biden said he had spent his career, as chairman of the judiciary committee when he was in the US Senate “and as vice president working for common sense gun reforms.” He said certain such reforms would have a significant impact on the number of deaths across the US but would “have no negative impact on the second amendment”, the long and fiercely-debated US constitutional right to “bear arms”. “The second amendment is not absolute, when it was passed you [1789] couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain types weapons, there have always been limitations. These actions we have taken before have saved lives and they can do it again. “The idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is just wrong,” he said. The alleged shooters in both the Buffalo and Uvalde killings were 18-year-olds who used US military-style assault rifles, readily available in gun stores. The suspect in the Buffalo killings is in custody, charged with murder. The suspect in Uvalde was shot dead by law enforcement inside the classroom of the elementary school where he was firing at children and their teachers. “It just violates common sense, even the manufacture of them, of that weapon,” he said. “You know, where is the backbone? Where is your courage to stand up to a very powerful lobby,” he said. Presumably, the president is referring to the US Congress, where Republicans repeatedly block legislation mandating greater gun controls (and many bills that Biden wants to advance in other areas have been held up by the fact that he has no more than a wafer-thin majority in that chamber, not enough to overcome the filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation_. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are holding an event at the White House to talk about policing, on the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer. But of course the school mass shooting is very present and vice-president Kamala Harris is talking first before she introduces the president. She echoed Biden’s remarks last night, saying: “We must have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws.” “We must work together to create an America where everyone feels safe in their communituy, where children feel safe in their schools,” Harris said. Now she has turned to the issue of police killings, addressing herself to the public but also the families of not just George Floyd who are at the White House today, but also Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police gunfire in Louisville, Kentucky, on 13 May 2020, just days before Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis.