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149-454: The Uvalde school shooting was a mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas , United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others. After shooting and wounding his grandmother at their home, Ramos drove to Robb Elementary School, where he entered a classroom, remaining in
298-430: A National Institute of Justice -funded project in which researchers studied every mass shooting since 1966, and approximately 150 mass shooters, and coded 50 life history variables for each. Their data suggest that almost all mass shooting perpetrators had four life history variables in common: they had (1) commonly experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence; (2) "reached an identifiable crisis point in
447-411: A "significant or substantively meaningful main effect" on attitudes toward gun control. However, the study did find evidence that mass shootings "have polarizing effects conditional on partisanship": "That is, Democrats who live near a mass shooting even tend to become more supportive of gun control restrictions, while Republican attitudes shift in the opposite direction." The study authors concluded, "To
596-523: A $ 10,000 bail. Both officers face up to two years in prison and a $ 10,000 fine if they are convicted. Mass shootings in the United States Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm related violence . Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence , or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which
745-471: A $ 69,141 grant to improve security measures as part of a $ 100 million statewide allocation made after the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting , in which ten people were slain. The district also had a security staff that patrolled door entrances and parking lots at secondary school campuses. Since 2020, Pedro "Pete" Arredondo had served as UCISD's police chief. The school and school district had extensive security measures in place. The school used Social Sentinel,
894-404: A backpack, and all-black clothing, while carrying an AR-15 style rifle and seven 30-round magazines. He brought into the school only one of the two rifles that he had legally bought, and left the other in the crashed truck. A witness said he first fired at two people at a nearby funeral home, both of whom escaped uninjured. Police reported receiving 9-1-1 calls about a vehicle having crashed near
1043-417: A car crash. She then had gone inside to grab her cellphone to call 9-1-1 about the crash and had propped open a door to the school with a rock but had kicked the door shut when she ran inside after witnessing the shooter hopping a fence and coming towards the school. This was one part of the misrepresented details that were published after the shooting. On June 3, a parent of one of the deceased victims filed
1192-759: A database by psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center which found that of the 1,315 personal-cause mass murders (i.e. driven by personal motivations and not occurring within the context of war , state-sponsored or group-sponsored terrorism , gang activity , or organized crime ) 11% of mass murderers and 8% of mass shooters had an SMI (e.g. schizophrenia , bipolar disorder , major depressive disorder ), that mass shootings have become more common than other forms of mass murder since 1970 (with 73% occurring in
1341-818: A detectable and observable range of activities with a wider pressure group, social movement, or terrorist organization, and a subset of 106 subjects for whom relationship data was available found that 68.9% had never married or were divorced or separated from their spouse and only 27.7% were reported to have children. British criminologist Peter Squires argued that mass shooters in Europe and the U.S. "tend to be loners with not much social support who strike out at their communities, schools and families", and noted that countries with high gun-ownership rates but greater social capital (such as Norway , Finland , Switzerland , and Israel ) have fewer mass killings. Psychologist Jillian Peterson and James Densley co-founded The Violence Project,
1490-607: A driver's license and did not know how to drive. According to his father, Ramos had a girlfriend, who lived in San Antonio. On May 14, Ramos sent a private Instagram message reading, "10 more days". A person responded, "Are you going to shoot up a school or something?" He replied, "No, stop asking dumb questions. You'll see." According to the Texas Department of Public Safety , in September 2021, Ramos asked his older sister to buy him
1639-497: A formal diagnosis of mental illness" and that only one-fourth of active shooters surveyed had a formal diagnosis of any mental health disorder (and a psychotic disorder in only 3 cases). The survey concludes that given the high lifetime prevalence of the symptoms of mental illness among the U.S. population, "formally diagnosed mental illness is not a very specific predictor of violence of any type, let alone targeted violence." The 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted by
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#17328913029221788-709: A grand jury to evaluate whether or not enforcement could be held criminally responsible for their response on the day of the shooting. One day after the release of the U.S. Department of Justice's report in January 2024, the grand jury began hearing testimony. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Col. Steve McCraw testified before the grand jury in February. Multiple law enforcement officers, including officers from DPS, were also subpoenaed to testify. The jury also toured Robb Elementary School for about an hour in June. On June 27, 2024,
1937-499: A growing divide appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states." The study specifically found that "A 10% increase in state gun ownership was associated with a significant 35.1% (12.7% to 62.7%, P=0.001) higher rate of mass shootings. Partially adjusted regression analyses produced similar results, as did analyses restricted to domestic and non-domestic mass shootings." A 2020 study published in Law and Human Behavior examined
2086-465: A gun, but she refused. On May 17, 2022, a day after his 18th birthday, he legally purchased a Smith & Wesson semi automatic rifle from a local gun store. He then purchased another rifle three days later. Investigators later found that his gun had a "hellfire" trigger device, which decreases the time required for the trigger to reset, increasing the possible rate of fire. Ramos sent an Instagram message to an acquaintance he met through Yubo, which showed
2235-421: A letter, seeking documents and records from Daniel Defense, through lawyers that had represented families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting against the manufacturer of the rifle used in the shooting. On June 7, attorney Thomas J. Henry filed a lawsuit, on behalf of four families of students injured in the shooting, against Ramos' estate and sought answers about how he had gained access to
2384-531: A male and a female, were dead upon arrival. Four other victims, the perpetrator's grandmother and three students, were taken to the University Hospital in San Antonio. Born on May 16, 2004 in Fargo, North Dakota , Salvador Rolando Ramos was a resident of Uvalde from an early age and was a former student at Uvalde High School . He also attended Robb Elementary School for fourth grade in the same classroom where he
2533-408: A mass shooting occurred. A panel of mental health and law enforcement experts has estimated that roughly one-third of acts of mass violence—defined as crimes in which four or more people were killed—since the 1990s were committed by people with a " serious mental illness " (SMI). However, the study emphasized that people with an SMI are responsible for less than 4% of all the violent acts committed in
2682-627: A middle category of "persistent emotional disturbance." In 2022, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law published a study by Jillian Peterson , James Densley , and others, assessing the life history variables of 172 mass shooters from 1966 to 2019. The researchers found that symptoms of psychosis played no role in 69% of mass shootings. In the October 2018 PLOS One study, the researchers studied whether state-level SMI rates predicted state-level mass shooting rates and found that state-level SMI rates did not predict state-level mass shooting rates. In 2004,
2831-523: A narrow definition fails "to capture and convey the full scope of large-scale gun violence in the United States" and its effect on marginalized communities. As of 2017, studies indicated that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred roughly once every 200 days. However, between 2011 and 2014, that rate has accelerated greatly with at least one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in
2980-444: A narrow definition of mass shootings that excludes the victims of street crime. Mark Follman of Mother Jones , which compiles an open-source database of mass shootings, contends that "While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem." Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox argues against
3129-692: A parent being pinned to the ground. Police pepper-sprayed a parent trying to get to their child, and an officer tackled the father of another student. Police reportedly used a taser on a parent who approached a bus to get their child. A mother of two students at the school was placed in handcuffs by officers for attempting to enter the school. When released from the handcuffs, she jumped the fence and retrieved her children, exiting before police entered. A video clip showed parents questioning why police were not trying to save their children, to which an officer replies: "Because I'm having to deal with you!" A United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) agent rushed to
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#17328913029223278-489: A policy of locking the doors of classrooms. According to a report released by the Texas House of Representatives on July 17, although the official school policy was for exterior and interior doors to remain locked, staff members would often unlock or open doors due to a lack of keys. Additionally, some employees were desensitized to the intruder alert system, as it was almost always used for incidents of an undocumented migrant in
3427-457: A populated area", excluding gun-related incidents that were the result of self-defense, gang or drug violence, residential or domestic disputes, crossfire as a byproduct of another ongoing criminal act, controlled barricade or hostage situations, or actions that appeared not to have put other people in peril. The appropriateness of a broad versus narrow definition of "mass shooting" has been the subject of debate. Some commentators argue in favor of
3576-415: A previous crime) tend to be committed by young Black or Hispanic males with extensive criminal records, typically against people of the same ethnic group. Public mass shootings of persons unrelated to the shooter, and for a reason not connected with a previous crime (the rarest but most publicized) are committed by men whose racial distribution closely matches that of the nation as a whole. Other than gender,
3725-541: A reduction in the number of mass shooting related homicides while the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB) was in place from 1994 to 2004, which had banned certain types of semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s . However, researchers also acknowledged that it was difficult to prove that the ban was the cause of this. Conversely, the RAND Corporation published a review in 2023 of five studies researching
3874-523: A request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago." Also on June 1, Arredondo told CNN that he was "in contact with DPS every day" and said he would not release further information about the events of the shooting while funerals are ongoing, citing respect for families: "Whenever this is done and the families quit grieving, then we'll do that obviously." When Uvalde Police Department's acting chief Lieutenant Mariano Pargas
4023-511: A second language learners instead of classifying them as having deficiencies in their intelligence. An employee also accused the school board of not hearing grievances. In 1973, Batesville ISD merged into Uvalde CISD. On May 24, 2022, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 others at Robb Elementary School. On June 3, 2022, UCISD Superintendent Hal Harrel stated that Robb Elementary School would not be reopened and its building demolished, to avoid renewing traumas related to
4172-450: A second to say that he had shot his grandmother; and a third, about 15 minutes before the shooting, to say that he was going to open fire at an elementary school. The girl replied, "cool". Later she faced trial in Frankfurt , Germany and was found guilty of "failing to report planned crimes." She was issued a warning and was required to "undergo educational measures." A spokesperson for Meta ,
4321-632: A sense of entitlement and seek scapegoats when they fail to achieve goals in life, and that hate-motivated and fame-seeking mass shootings have increased since 2015. A 2021 article in the journal Injury Epidemiology found that from 2014 to 2019, 59.1% of mass shootings in the United States were related to domestic violence (DV), and the shooter either killed a family member or had a DV history in 68.2% of mass shootings. Mass shooting contagion (the " copycat phenomenon ") has been studied. A study published in PLOS One in 2015 examined mass shootings in
4470-466: A shooter kills at least four victims. Using this definition, a 2016 study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 (90 of 292 incidents) occurred in the United States, In 2017 The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in
4619-578: A single psychological profile and the characterization of mass shooters as "friendless loners" is a stereotype. Psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum argued that the data from the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Irving Medical Center database of mass shootings show that "legal problems, substance and alcohol use, and difficulty coping with life events seem more useful foci for prevention [of mass shootings] and policy than an emphasis on serious mental illness." In
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4768-516: A software service that monitored the social media accounts of students and other Uvalde-affiliated people to identify threats made against students or staff. The district's written security plan noted the use of the Raptor Visitor Management System in schools to scan visitor identity documents and check them against watch-lists, as well as the use of two-way radios , fence enclosures around campus, school threat-assessment teams, and
4917-462: A student who hid in the adjoining classroom, Ramos came in and slightly crouched down saying, "It's time to die," before opening fire. Afterward, a responding officer called out, "Yell if you need help!" A girl in the adjoining classroom said, "Help." Ramos heard the girl, entered the classroom, and shot her. A student said that the officer then barged into the classroom, and Ramos fired at the officer, causing more officers to return fire. Arnulfo Reyes,
5066-420: A teacher in classroom 111 who received multiple gunshot wounds, recalled he instructed his students to "get under the table and act like you're asleep." Ramos then arrived and shot him before firing indiscriminately around classroom 111. Reyes said he "didn't hear talk for a while," but later on, Ramos unleashed a second round of gunfire at students, and Reyes said, "If he didn't get them the first time, he got them
5215-461: A variety of adverse psychological outcomes in survivors and members of affected communities". It says that, while "the psychological effects of mass shootings on indirectly exposed populations" is less well-understood, "there is evidence that such events lead to at least short-term increases in fears and declines in perceived safety." Identified risk factors for adverse psychological outcomes have included, among others, demographics, greater proximity to
5364-569: Is a public school district based in Uvalde , Texas , US. Located in Uvalde County , the district extends into portions of Zavala and Real counties. In addition to Uvalde, the district serves the communities of Batesville in Zavala County, and Uvalde Estates in Uvalde County. The total land area of the district is 1,093 square miles (2,830 km ). In 2009, the school district
5513-438: Is contagious for an average of 13 days and incites an average of at least 0.22 new incidents (p = 0.0001)." The October 2018 PLOS One study found that state-level poverty rates and state-level population sizes did not predict state-level mass shooting rates, but did find that greater online media coverage and online search interest levels correlated with shorter intervals between any two consecutive incidents of mass shootings and
5662-464: Is missing other factors that contribute to the vast majority of cases". Likewise, in a general research review on mass shootings, researchers at the RAND Corporation have noted that due to mass shootings having low base rates , "policies targeting individuals based on risk factors would result in an extremely high rate of false positives " and that the probability of individuals identified by even
5811-450: Is no common profile of people who carry out mass shootings in the United States, except that they are mostly men. By race , according to a study, the proportion of mass shooters in the United States who are white is about equal to the overall proportion of white people in the general population of the US . The proportion of male mass shooters is considerably larger than the proportion of males in
5960-562: The Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. After the shooting, Robb Elementary was closed. The district plans to demolish it and build a replacement. Uvalde is a Hispanic -majority city of about 15,000 people in the South Texas region; it is located about 60 miles (97 km) east of the United States–Mexico border and about 85 miles (137 km) west of San Antonio . In 2022, about 90% of Robb Elementary School's 600 students in
6109-498: The Federal Trade Commission Act . Oasis Outback, which delivered the rifle used in the attack to Ramos, was accused of negligent transfer of firearms as well as the fact that the store "had a duty not to sell weapons to the just-turned 18-year-old shooter, who it knew or reasonably should have known was likely to harm himself or others". Ramos was described by witnesses as "nervous" and "behaving suspiciously" while inside
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6258-1046: The Journal of Threat Assessment and Management published a study comparing 171 public mass shooters and 63 active shooters in the United States from 1966 to 2019 (using cases compiled in The Violence Project's database) to the general population, homicide offenders , and people who die by suicide . In comparison to the general population, mass shooters were more likely to have a history of mental health issues, to have lifetime thought disorders , and greater lifetime suicidal ideation, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters four times more frequently premeditated their homicides, eight times more frequently killed strangers, and were more likely to experience suicidal ideation and commit suicide directly or by cop . In comparison to people who committed suicide, mass shooters were actually more likely to have histories of suicidal ideation and were slightly more likely to premeditate
6407-591: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimated that 57.8 million U.S. adults had a mental illness and 14.1 million U.S. adults had an SMI, while the Gun Violence Archive recorded 690 mass shootings in the United States in the same year. Psychiatrist Ronald W. Pies has suggested that psychopathology should be understood as a three-gradation continuum of mental, behavioral and emotional disturbance with most mass shooters falling into
6556-489: The U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education issued a report analyzing 41 school shootings in the United States that found that 78% of the shooters surveyed had histories of suicidal ideation or attempted suicide . In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that 96 of the 160 incidents (60%) ended before police arrived, and in 64 incidents (40%) the shooter committed suicide . In December 2021,
6705-527: The United States Department of Justice announced it would review the law enforcement response to the mass shooting at the request of Uvalde Mayor, Don McLaughlin. After initially praising first responders, Governor Greg Abbott called for an investigation into the lack of initiative displayed by law enforcement. On May 27, Abbott said, "Bottom line would be why did they not choose the strategy that would have been best to get in there and to eliminate
6854-436: The second through fourth grades were Hispanic, and about 81% of the student population came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. On the day of the shooting, there had been an awards ceremony at the school. The city of Uvalde spent 40% of its municipal budget on its police department in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, and UCISD, the school district operating Robb Elementary School, had multiple security measures in place at
7003-506: The "dead suspect loophole", where information is suppressed for crimes in which no one has been convicted, including in cases where the suspect is dead. Freeman F. Martin, deputy director of Homeland Security Operations at the Texas DPS, informed Burrows that the district attorney of Uvalde County has objected to the release of a portion of a video taken in the hallway during the police response. The clip ended immediately before officers breached
7152-591: The December 2021 Journal of Threat Assessment and Management study, mass shooters were more likely to be unemployed and be unmarried in comparison to the general population, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters were more likely to not be in an intimate relationship. In the December 2013 Journal of Forensic Sciences lone-actor terrorists survey, a wide range of activities and experiences preceded lone actors attacks, many but not all lone-actors were socially isolated, lone-actors regularly engaged in
7301-459: The District of Columbia, 30% reported personally owning a firearm and 44% reported living in a household that owned at least one firearm, while the 2020 United States census enumerated the U.S. adult population to be approximately 258.3 million persons in 126.8 million households and the Gun Violence Archive recorded 610 mass shootings in the United States in the same year. Researchers have found
7450-475: The October 2018 PLOS One study assessed the impact of state-level gun ownership rates in predicting state-level mass shooting rates and found that state-level gun ownership rates were not statistically significantly associated with the number of mass shootings in each state. The researchers tested the possibility that the relationship between gun ownership and the mass shooting rate was being confounded by gun law permissiveness and found that gun law permissiveness
7599-599: The U.S. from 2000 to 2013 (averaging approximately 11 cases annually) in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The study found that 45.6% took place in a business or commercial setting, 16.9% occurred in schools, 7.5% in institutions of higher education, 9.4% in open spaces, 6.9% in (non-military) government properties, 3.1% in military sites, 4.4% in homes, 3.8% in places of worship, and 2.5% in healthcare settings. FBI data shows that active shooter incidents increased from 2000 to 2019. A comprehensive report by USA Today tracked all mass killings from 2006 through 2017 in which
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#17328913029227748-470: The U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that "significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incentivized by similar events in the immediate past," concluding that: "On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days, and each incident incites at least 0.30 new incidents (p = 0.0015). We also find significant evidence of contagion in school shootings, for which an incident
7897-408: The U.S. was associated with statistically significant and "substantively meaningful" increases in support for stricter gun control laws . The study also found that repeated events, magnitude, and recency of mass shootings play a role with "proximity to repeated events, more horrific events and more recent events" increasing "the salience of gun violence, and thus ... support for gun control." However,
8046-714: The US, most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-violence, social-violence, and domestic violence-related. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings per one million people), followed by Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings per million) and Illinois. Perpetrator demographics vary by type of mass shooting, though in almost all cases they are male. Contributing factors include easy access to guns , perpetrator suicidality and early childhood trauma , as well as various sociocultural factors including online media reporting of mass shootings. In one study, 44% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing
8195-772: The United States are suicides rather than homicides), the tendency of most media attention following mass shootings on mental health leads to sociocultural factors being comparatively overlooked. Instead, Knoll and Annas cite research by social psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell on narcissism and social rejection in the personal histories of mass shooters, as well as cognitive scientist Steven Pinker 's suggestion in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) that further reductions in human violence may be dependent upon reducing human narcissism. Conversely, psychologist Peter F. Langman has argued that while mass shooters follow similar patterns, mass shooters do not fit
8344-447: The United States from 1976 to 2018. There is no fixed definition of a mass shooting in the United States, and different researchers define "mass shootings" in different ways. Of the 7 following definitions, most use a minimum of 4 victims as a threshold. Among the various definitions are those that are: The FBI defines an "active shooter" incident as "one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in
8493-510: The United States alone), and that mass shooters in the U.S. were more likely to have legal histories , to engage in recreational drug use or alcohol abuse , and to display non- psychotic psychiatric or neurologic symptoms. In October 2022, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a subsequent review of 82 mass murders in the Columbia University database that at least partially occurred in academic settings that found that 68% of
8642-467: The United States and Europe that found that 96.6% were male. Higher accessibility and ownership of guns has been cited as a reason for the U.S.'s high rate of mass shootings. The U.S. has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world with 120.5 firearms per 100 people; the second highest is Yemen with 52.8 firearms per 100 people. In a Gallup survey conducted in September and October 2020 of 1,035 randomly selected U.S. adults in all 50 states and
8791-757: The United States in the same year. In the December 2013 Journal of Forensic Sciences lone-actor terrorists survey, lone-actor attacks were rarely sudden or impulsive and the researchers have subsequently noted that a sizable subset of their subjects took preparations to maximize their chances of death by cop or suicide. Based upon the similarities in premeditation and lifetime suicidal ideation, James Densley has argued, "Many of these mass shootings are angry suicides." A 2021 cross-sectional study published in JAMA Network Open examining 170 perpetrators of mass public shootings from 1996 to 2019, found that 44% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing
8940-532: The United States, including semi-automatic handguns , semi-automatic rifles , revolvers , and shotguns . Of the 172 events from 1966 to 2019 classified as mass public shootings (four or more victims killed) in the U.S. by the 2022 National Institute of Justice /The Violence Project dataset, perpetrators used handguns in 77.2% of cases and semi-automatic rifles in 25.1% of cases. An earlier 2016 study by James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel similarly concluded that "rather than assault weapons, semiautomatic handguns are
9089-525: The United States. Under the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive, by the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings; by the end of 2020, there had been 611; and by the end of 2021, 693. By mid-May 2021, there were 10 mass shootings per week on average; by mid-May 2022, there was a total of 198 mass shootings in the first 19 weeks of the year, which represents 11 mass shootings a week. The FBI designated 61 active shooter incidents. There were ten mass shootings in 2019, two in 2020, and six in 2021. Under
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#17328913029229238-536: The United States. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) states that gun violence is a public health crisis and has repeatedly noted that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and "are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence." In February 2021, Psychological Medicine published a survey reviewing 14,785 publicly reported murders in English language news worldwide between 1900 and 2019 compiled in
9387-524: The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department and other responding agencies were criticized for their responses to the incident. In early July 2022, Chief of Police Pete Arredondo resigned from his city council position. On August 24, 2022, the board of the school district fired Arredondo from his job as police chief by unanimous vote. In 2023, the district began construction of
9536-435: The ability to compare and contrast an active shooter situation versus a barricaded subject or hostage crisis where an armed person isolates themselves with limited to no ability to harm others. The March 2022 training materials for UCISD said, "Time is the number-one enemy during active shooter response ... The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract or neutralize
9685-523: The act, and that "Leakage was associated with receiving counseling and suicidality, which suggests it may be best characterized as a cry for help from perpetrators prior to their act." "These findings suggest that leakage is a critical moment for mental health intervention to prevent gun violence." In 2015, psychiatrists James L. Knoll and George D. Annas noted that considering that mass shootings committed by perpetrators with SMIs amount to less than 1% of all gun-related homicides (and that most gun deaths in
9834-454: The act. The Federal Bureau of Investigation designated 61 of all events in 2021 as active shooter incidents. The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country. After a shooting, perpetrators generally either commit suicide or are restrained or killed by law enforcement officers . Mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of gun deaths in the United States between 2000 and 2016, and less than 0.5% of all homicides in
9983-468: The act. However, like the APA, the researchers emphasized that having a formal mental health disorder diagnosis is more predictive of being a victim of violence rather than a perpetrator. In 2022, there were 49,449 suicides in the United States (a record high) and the suicide rate in 2022 reached its highest level since 1941 at 14.3 per 100,000 persons, while the Gun Violence Archive recorded 646 mass shootings in
10132-424: The adjoining classrooms where the shooter was, called her husband, Ruben Ruiz, a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officer, who was outside the school. According to DPS Director Steven McCraw, during the call Mireles told Ruiz that she had been shot and was dying; when Ruiz "tried to move forward into the hallway, he was detained [by law enforcement] and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off
10281-698: The area running from police. UCISD held joint security training exercises in August 2020 along with the Uvalde Police Department, the Uvalde County Sheriff's Department, and other local law enforcement agencies. UCISD also hosted an active shooter scenario training exercise in March 2022, which covered a range of topics, such as solo responses to active shooters, first aid and evacuation, and scenarios enacted through role-playing . The exercise also covered
10430-668: The attack, acquaintance with victims, and less access to psychosocial resources. With the aftermath of the shooting being psychological, hospitals should acquire programs or help facilities for their patients. The most vulnerable patients are children and young adults due to the fact that their brains aren't fully developed. The likelihood of them developing PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and more, are extraordinarily high. Studies show that 12.4% of mass shooting patients were diagnosed with some form of mental illness, most common being PTSD. Men show lower rates of developing PTSD unlike women who show higher rates. Men and women who fit
10579-474: The classroom and did not show any images of children. Burrows, Martin, and Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin believe that releasing the footage would be helpful to the public. On July 12, 2022, the Austin American-Statesman released 77 minutes of video composed of footage from hallway cameras and an officer's body worn camera. The released video was edited to obscure the identity of a student and to remove
10728-460: The classroom to talk, saying they did not want to hurt anyone. Separately, Reyes said in past security checks, the classroom 111 door that was meant to be locked during lessons remained unlocked because "the latch was stuck," and that he had told the principal about this issue. A male student in classroom 109 said that around 15 minutes after the shooting began, the gunman approached classroom 109's door and pulled its handle, but his teacher had jammed
10877-399: The classroom, he shot the door's window, then backed Garcia into the classroom, and said, "Goodnight," as he shot and killed her. Another survivor recounted that Ramos said, "You're all gonna die," after entering the classroom. He then opened fire on the rest of the students and another teacher in the room. According to a surviving student, Ramos played "sad music" during the massacre. Most of
11026-534: The classrooms where he shot his victims before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit shot him, after he had bypassed local and state officers who had been in the hallways. Police officers waited more than 1 hour and 14 minutes on-site before breaching the classroom to engage him. Police cordoned off the school grounds, resulting in violent conflicts between police and civilians, including parents, who were attempting to enter
11175-503: The criteria for PTSD also showed that they gained depression. The following mass shootings are the deadliest to have occurred in modern U.S. history. Only incidents with ten or more fatalities by gunshots, excluding those of the perpetrators, are included. This list starts in 1949, the year in which Howard Unruh committed his shooting, which was the first in modern U.S. history to incur ten or more fatalities. UCISD PD Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District ( UCISD )
11324-524: The demographic profiles of public mass shooters are too varied to draw firm conclusions. In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that the perpetrator was female in only 6 of the 160 incidents (4%) and that in only 2 incidents (1%) was there more than one perpetrator. Analogously, in December 2013, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a sociodemographic network characteristics and antecedent behaviors survey of 119 lone-actor terrorists in
11473-473: The door after hearing gunfire. The gunman shot through the door's glass window, striking another student and a fourth grade teacher in classroom 109, then left. With a Texas official stating that the gunman had briefly returned into the hallway after entering classrooms 111 and 112 (without specifying what time this occurred), The Washington Post reported that "this is likely when those in Room 109 were shot at," before
11622-453: The door to classroom 111, while a Uvalde Police Department officer tried the door to classroom 112, but both were locked. According to Arredondo, the classroom door had a steel jamb that prevented law enforcement from easily breaching it. Later reporting indicated these doors were not in fact locked. Arredondo was aware the gunman was firing from within the classroom, and that some shots had grazed police officers. According to Arredondo, he and
11771-430: The door was opened, a BORTAC agent entered the room holding the shield, followed by two other BORTAC agents, a Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue agent (BORSTAR), and at least one sheriff's deputy. Ramos reportedly opened fire at the group from a closet in the room before officials returned fire and killed him. In an interview by The Texas Tribune published on June 9, 2022, Uvalde School District Police Chief at
11920-465: The effects of the FAWB and state assault weapons bans on the frequency and lethality of mass shootings and found the evidence to be inconclusive, and the review also evaluated two studies researching the effect of high-capacity magazine bans on reducing the frequency and lethality of mass shootings and found the evidence for an effect to be limited. Several types of guns have been used in mass shootings in
12069-499: The extent that mass shootings may affect public opinion, the result is polarizing rather than consensus building." A 2020 study published in the American Political Science Review using data on school shootings from 2006 to 2018 concluded the incidents had "little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States," whereas a 2021 study in the same journal covering a broader time period (1980–2016) found that
12218-456: The extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat." Below is a timeline of events, according to law enforcement and other sources. This timeline is still under investigation. As of June 19, 2022, there are multiple disputes about the timeline. On June 10, 2022, Arredondo told CBS News that he did not know he
12367-472: The face, before taking her black 2008 Ford F-150 . She survived and got help from neighbors while police officers were called in. She was then airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio in critical condition. Ramos, using his Facebook account, sent three private messages to a 15-year-old girl from Germany whom he had met online prior to the shooting: the first to say that he was going to shoot his grandmother;
12516-526: The frequency of mass shootings is increasing due to differences in research methods and differences in the criteria used to define events as mass shootings. In 2018 The Washington Post recorded 163 mass shootings in the United States between 1967 and June 2019. Mother Jones recorded 140 mass shootings between 1982 and February 2023. Under the Everytown for Gun Safety definition ("any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding
12665-737: The general population. According to the Associated Press , white men comprise nearly 50% of all mass shooters in the US. According to the National Institute of Justice/The Violence project study, the demographics of shooters were 97.7% male, with an average age of 34.1 years, 52.3% white, 20.9% black, 8.1% Latino, 6.4% Asian, 4.2% middle eastern, and 1.8% native American. According to the Center for Inquiry , mass shootings of family members (the most common) are usually carried out by white, middle-aged males. Felony-related mass shootings (connected with
12814-577: The grand jury indicted first Uvalde school district police chief Pedro Arredondo and another former officer, Adrian Gonzales, on charges of child endangerment, a state felony. Arredono was charged with 10 counts of child endangerment, Gonzales with 29 counts. The same day, Arrendano was arrested and booked into the Uvalde jail, and then released after posting a $ 10,000 surety bond and nine $ 10,000 personal recognizance bonds. On June 28, Gonzaelez would be arrested after turning himself in, and then released after posting
12963-444: The gravity of the situation, including one officer taking a pump of hand sanitizer from a dispenser, and two other officers exchanging a fist bump . A Uvalde staff member filed a petition for information about Daniel Defense on June 2, attempting to make a prima facie case against the gunmaker for its marketing of the weapons. The staff member had been outside delivering food to the school for an end-of-year party when she witnessed
13112-446: The gunman returned to classrooms 111 and 112. Officers arrived three minutes after Ramos entered the school and approached rooms 111 and 112, but they retreated after Ramos fired at them, injuring two officers. Officers were not successful in establishing negotiations. United States Marshals Service deputies drove nearly 70 miles (110 km) to the school and arrived at 12:10 p.m., where they helped officers initially confront
13261-523: The incident commander. Arredondo disputed the characterization of his role as incident commander, but was fired by the Uvalde school board. A report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee attributed the fault more widely to "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" by many authorities. It said, "At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving
13410-471: The investigation would be done in private out of "respect for the process" and wanting to be "thorough" and "accurate" before revealing "any conclusions". On June 20, before the committee had a hearing at Uvalde City Hall, a fire marshal told parents, journalists, and a chaplain to leave the premises because "someone is intimidated". On June 16, the City of Uvalde through its attorneys cited several reasons to prevent
13559-676: The killer and to rescue the children?" On June 1, ABC News , citing multiple unnamed law enforcement sources, reported that the Uvalde Police Department (UPD) and the UCISD police force had stopped cooperating with investigations soon after the DPS said on May 27 that police had erred in delaying entry into the classroom. The DPS responded that the UPD and UCISD police force "have been cooperating with investigators", while specifying that UCISD police chief Pedro Arredondo "provided an initial interview but has not responded to
13708-455: The lights. We had no idea what was behind those doors." On June 9, a committee of three started their investigations into the shooting on behalf of the Texas House of Representatives ; the committee consisted of Representative Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), Representative Joe Moody (D-El Paso) and former Texas Supreme Court member Eva Guzman (R). That day, committee leader Burrows explained that
13857-458: The lives of innocent victims over their own safety... there was an unacceptably long period of time before officers breached the classroom, neutralized the attacker, and began rescue efforts." Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials gave inaccurate reports of the timeline of events and exaggerated police actions. The Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged it was an error for law enforcement to delay an assault on Ramos' position in
14006-529: The mass murder perpetrators and 81% of the mass shooters did not have an SMI and that 46% of the mass shootings surveyed ended with the perpetrator committing suicide, leading the researchers to conclude that "To prevent future mass school shootings, we need to begin to focus on the cultural and social drivers of these types of events... rather than on individual predictors" and that "The findings strongly suggest that focusing on mental illness, particularly psychotic illness, when talking about mass school shooting risks
14155-486: The most predictive risk factors to commit a mass shooting is "on the order of one in a million." In 2018, the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit released a survey of 63 active shooter cases between 2000 and 2013. It found that 62% of active shooters showed symptoms of mental health disorders, but those symptoms may have been "transient manifestations of behaviors and moods that would not be sufficient to warrant
14304-563: The officers in the school hallway did their best to remain quiet, only whispering to each other, fearing that if the gunman heard them, he would shoot at them. He spent over an hour in the hallway, of which he held back from the classroom doors for 40 minutes to avoid attracting gunfire. Arredondo said that during the wait for door breaching tools, he tried to talk to the gunman through the walls to establish rapport, but got no response. Also in The Texas Tribune interview, Arredondo said he
14453-525: The outcomes and identities of 23 remain unknown." In 2022, the Violence Project of the National Institute of Justice recorded 185 mass shootings from 1966 to December 2022. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in the US. The 2023 JAMA report showed mass shootings were most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This
14602-486: The parent company of Facebook, said the posts were "private one-to-one text messages" discovered after the shooting took place. Ramos crashed his grandmother's truck through a barricade and into a concrete ditch outside Robb Elementary School at 11:28 a.m. CDT ( UTC–5 ) and proceeded to scale a fence and enter the school grounds. According to police, he wore a tactical vest for carrying ammunition that did not include ballistic protection or armor insert panels, plus
14751-552: The perpetrator willfully killed four or more people. For mass killings by firearm for instance, it found 271 incidents with a total of 1,358 victims. In October 2018, PLOS One published a study analyzing 100 mass shootings from the Mother Jones database from January 1982 to May 2018 to evaluate whether mass shootings became more common in the United States over the preceding three decades. It found that mass shootings had steadily increased. However, some researchers dispute whether
14900-409: The perpetrator's grandmother, and two police officers. Abbott said the two officers were struck by bullets but had no serious injuries. Several victims died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, including Mireles. Uvalde Memorial Hospital's CEO reported that eleven children and three other people were admitted for emergency care following the shooting. Four were released, and two, described only as
15049-427: The radios did not work in some school buildings. Arredondo said he was unaware of 9-1-1 calls being made from the classrooms the gunman was in because he did not have a radio and no one told him; the other officers in the school hallway were not in radio communication either. In The Texas Tribune interview, Arredondo said that he did not consider himself as the incident commander for law enforcement; instead, his role
15198-421: The receipt for an AR-15 style rifle purchased from Georgia-based online retailer Daniel Defense eight days before the shooting. He posted a picture of two rifles on his Instagram account three days before the shooting. Ahead of the shooting, Ramos had purchased 1,657 total rounds of ammunition, which included 375 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition purchased on May 18, 2022. A total of 315 rounds were found inside
15347-524: The relationship of state guns laws and the incidence and lethality of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1976 to 2018. The study found that "laws requiring permits to purchase a gun are associated with a lower incidence of mass public shootings, and bans on large capacity magazines are associated with fewer fatalities and nonfatal injuries when such events do occur." The study specifically found that large-capacity magazine bans were associated with approximately 38% fewer fatalities and 77% fewer nonfatal injuries when
15496-455: The release of police records related to the shooting. The stated reasons include: information that "is not of legitimate concern to the public"; "highly embarrassing information" related to criminal history; potential revealing of police "methods, techniques, and strategies for preventing and predicting crime"; potentially distressing information; potentially exposing city employees or officers to "a substantial threat of physical harm"; privacy; and
15645-441: The researchers concluded that their findings suggest that online media might correlate with an increasing incidence rate of mass shootings. Steven Pinker has also noted that much of the news media in the United States has an editorial policy of "if it bleeds, it leads" . Other posited factors contributing to the prevalence of mass shootings include perpetrators' desire to seek revenge for perceived school or workplace bullying ,
15794-407: The scene after receiving a text message from his wife, who was a teacher there. Prior to this, the agent had been off-duty. The agent immediately set out with a shotgun his barber had lent him and arrived on the scene approximately an hour after the first responders arrived. He then proceeded to help evacuate children. Contrary to online rumors and social media posts, he did not enter the school or kill
15943-498: The scene." Mireles eventually died from her gunshot wounds. After the police cordoned off the outside of the school, parents pleaded with officers to enter the building. When they did not, parents offered to enter the building themselves. Officers held back and tackled parents who tried to enter the school, further warning that they would use tasers if the parents did not comply with directions. Video clips of these interactions were uploaded to social media, including one that depicted
16092-401: The school on October 28, 2021, due to his frequent absences. Ramos' social media acquaintances said he openly abused and killed animals such as cats and would livestream the abuse on Yubo . Other social media acquaintances said that he would also livestream himself on Yubo threatening to kidnap and rape girls who used the app, as well as threatening to commit a school shooting. Ramos' account
16241-553: The school to rescue children. As a consequence, law enforcement officials in Uvalde were criticized for their response, and their conduct was reviewed in separate investigations by the Texas Ranger Division and United States Department of Justice . Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials laid much of the responsibility for the police response on Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department (UCISD PD) Chief Pedro Arredondo, who they identified as
16390-400: The school, but did not fire because he was awaiting his supervisor's permission. After entering the building, Ramos walked down two short hallways and then entered a classroom that was internally connected to another classroom. All of the fatalities took place in these adjoining classrooms, 111 and 112. A survivor of the shooting said that, as teacher Irma Garcia attempted to lock the door to
16539-411: The school, consisting of 142 spent cartridges and 173 live rounds. Additionally, a total of 922 rounds were found on school property outside the building, consisting of 22 spent cartridges and 900 live rounds. Overall, Ramos fired 164 rounds during the shooting. Police and Border Patrol officers fired a combined total of 35 rounds during the shooting: eight in the hallway and 27 in the classroom where Ramos
16688-457: The school. After hearing of the 9-1-1 call, a school resource officer drove to the school's campus and pursued a teacher whom the officer erroneously believed to be the gunman, driving past the actual gunman in the process. Ramos entered the school through its west-facing entrance door, which had been shut by a teacher who had seen him. The entrance door did not lock despite being designed to be locked when shut. UCISD's police chief estimated that
16837-902: The school. Henry said that the initial lawsuit would allow them to discover evidence and potentially add other parties to the lawsuit, with the discovery process focused on the school system, law enforcement, social media, and the gun and ammunition manufacturers. On November 28, 2022, the family of victim Eliahna Torres, including her mother, Sandra, filed a lawsuit alongside Everytown for Gun Safety against gun manufacturer Daniel Defense and gun store Oasis Outback, as well as two dozen additional people and entities. The lawsuit alleged that Daniel Defense markets its AR-15 style rifles by "using militaristic imagery and video game references, by marketing on various social media platforms, and by suggesting that its rifles can be used by civilians for offensive combat-style operations against non-combatants", as well as accusations of unfair marketing tactics and violation of
16986-584: The second time." All 11 students in classroom 111 during the shooting died. Reyes pretended to be unconscious on the floor, but Ramos then shot him again. According to Reyes, he heard law enforcement approach his classroom from what sounded like the hallway three times, but they did not enter; during one of these occasions, he heard a student from the adjoining classroom 112 saying, "Officer, we're in here. We're in here." As law enforcement had already left, Reyes said Ramos "walked over there, and he shot again." Reyes later heard law enforcement telling Ramos to come out of
17135-514: The shooter") there were an average of 19 mass shootings in the U.S. each year from 2009 to 2020, with 947 wounded by gunfire and 1,363 fatally shot. The report found that: "In nearly all mass shootings over this period, the shooter was an adult man who acted alone. Thirty-two percent of mass shooters, or 92 shooters, ended with the perpetrator dying by suicide, and another 24 shooters were killed by responding law enforcement. The remaining 145 mass shooters were taken into custody by law enforcement, while
17284-580: The shooter, render first aid, and secure the perimeter. At 12:17, UCISD sent out a message on Twitter that there was an active shooter at the elementary school. The school district's police chief, Pedro Arredondo, erroneously determined that the situation had "transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject" according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). With Ramos thought to be contained, officials believed they had bought enough time to bring in tactical units. According to Uvalde County judge Bill Mitchell, teacher Eva Mireles, from inside
17433-423: The shooter. Additional BORTAC agents arrived, but they did not have a battering ram or other breaching tools, so a U.S. Marshal on the scene provided agents with a ballistic shield . Ramos stayed in the classroom for around one hour, hiding behind a steel door that officers said they could not open until they obtained a master key from the janitor. However, there is evidence that the door was never locked. After
17582-492: The shooting began at 11:32; according to a Facebook post by the school, the school was placed in lockdown at 11:43 a.m. in response to gunshots heard in the vicinity. At 11:40 a.m., a teacher in Room 102 reached a 9-1-1 dispatcher after having tried unsuccessfully to reach them on three occasions. The teacher told the dispatcher that she could hear gunshots in a nearby classroom. A report released on July 6 found that an officer had aimed his rifle at Ramos before he entered
17731-408: The shooting occurred inside the building within the first few minutes; Ramos was inside the classroom for over an hour while armed police remained outside the classroom and building. Multiple students played dead while the shooting took place, including one student, 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo, who smeared herself with the blood of one of her dead classmates to give credence to the subterfuge. According to
17880-423: The shooting, Ramos started posting pictures to his Instagram account of semi-automatic rifles that were on his wish list. According to a friend of his, he would often drive around at night with another friend, shooting at strangers with a BB gun and egging cars. According to a man who was in a relationship with Ramos' mother, Ramos moved out of his mother's house and into his grandparents' house two months before
18029-552: The shooting, after an argument broke out between him and his mother over Ramos turning off the Wi-Fi . People close to Ramos' family described his mother as a drug user and said he frequently argued with her. Two months prior to the shooting, he posted a video of himself on Instagram aggressively arguing with his mother and referring to her as a "bitch". Ramos' mother described her son as "not a monster" but admitted that he could "be aggressive". His grandfather said that his grandson did not have
18178-557: The shooting. The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department is the police force with primary jurisdiction over Uvalde CISD property. In February 2020, the district's Board of Trustees approved Pedro "Pete" Arredondo as new Chief of Police of the UCISD Police Department. As of 2022 , Arredondo commanded a team of six officers. Following the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24, 2022,
18327-513: The shooting. Following the shooting, which occurred 10 days after the 2022 Buffalo shooting , discussions ensued about American gun culture and violence, gridlock in politics , and law enforcement's failure to intervene during the attack. A month after the shooting, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and President Joe Biden signed it into law; it was the most significant federal gun reform legislation since
18476-520: The sound of children screaming. The video was intended to be shown to the families of victims on Sunday, July 17, before it would be released publicly. The Austin American-Statesman obtained a copy of the video and published it on July 12, creating anger amongst some of the victims' families while others expressed support for its publication. The leaked video attracted further criticism and outrage, showing law enforcement to seemingly not understand
18625-482: The store. Furthermore, the lawsuit filed charges on the accusation of a "failed law enforcement response", claiming that Eliahna's Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated when she and her fellow students and teachers were involuntarily confined within their classrooms, accompanying additional unlawful seizure and lack of due process accusations towards the law enforcement defendants. In late 2023, Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell convened
18774-405: The student-filled classrooms, attributing this to the school district police chief's assessment of the situation as one with a " barricaded subject ", instead of an " active shooter ". Law enforcement was aware there were injured individuals in the school before they made their entrance. In June 2024, two officers, including Arredondo, were criminally indicted for allegedly mishandling the response to
18923-445: The study found that the "most powerful effects" in support or opposition to gun control "are driven by variables related to local culture, with pronounced but expected differences emerging between respondents in rural, conservative, and gun-heavy areas and those residing in urban, liberal areas with few firearm stores." A separate 2019 replication study , extending the earlier panel analysis , found no evidence that mass shootings caused
19072-413: The substantially narrower 2022 National Institute of Justice /The Violence Project dataset definition, there were 167 mass shootings (4 or more killed with firearms in public, not connected to "underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance") in the U.S. from 1966 to 2019, and 30.8% of the shootings occurred at the workplace. In 2014, the FBI conducted a review of 160 active shooter incidents in
19221-402: The ten deadliest mass shooting events. A study published in PLOS One in 2015 examined mass shootings in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that the "state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings." Conversely,
19370-411: The threat, even if that means one officer acting alone." The materials also put forth the position that a "first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field". On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos and his 66-year-old grandmother had an argument over his failure to graduate from high school at their home in Uvalde, during which he shot her in
19519-425: The time of the shooting. The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department ( UCISD PD ) had a six-officer police department responsible for security at the district's eight schools. It had also more than doubled its expenditures on security measures in the four years preceding the shooting, and in 2021, it expanded its police force from four officers to six officers. The state of Texas had given UCISD
19668-455: The time, Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, said he arrived at the school thinking he was the first law enforcement officer on the scene. He claimed he abandoned his police and campus radios because he wanted his hands free to shoot the gunman, and stated he also thought the radios would slow him down. He said one radio's antenna would hit him when he ran, while the other radio was prone to falling off his belt when he ran, and that he knew from experience that
19817-421: The town or city where the incident occurs, and fades within a week of the incident." The study authors suggested that this phenomenon could help explain why mass shootings in the U.S. have not led to meaningful policy reform efforts. A review article first published online in 2015 and then printed in January 2017 in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse concluded that "mass shootings are associated with
19966-413: The use of the broad definition of "mass shooting" in the popular press, stating that it misleads readers. Others, by contrast, argue that defining "mass shooting" solely as a shooting in a public place in which the perpetrator fires at random is too narrow. For example, Mark Hay argues that although gang, party, and domestic violence "probably warrant different solutions" than random mass public shootings,
20115-509: The vote share of the Democratic Party increased by an average of almost 5 percentage points in counties that had experienced a "rampage-style" school shooting . Both studies found no increase in voter turnout . A 2021 study published in PNAS concluded that "mass shootings have a strong impact on the emotions of individuals, but the impact is politicized, limited to individuals living within
20264-425: The weapons of choice for most mass shooters." High-capacity magazines were used in more than half of mass shootings over the four decades up to 2018. From 1966 to 2019, approximately 77% of mass shooters in the U.S. legally obtained the firearm used in the attacks. Although semi-automatic rifles are used in only 1% of overall shootings in the U.S., they are used in 25% of mass shootings, and (as of 2018) in six of
20413-602: The weeks or months leading up to the shooting," often linked to a specific grievance; (3) researched previous mass shootings, with many being radicalized through the internet; and (4) obtained the means (firearms) to carry out the plan, with perpetrators obtaining weapons from family members in 80% of school shootings, workplace shooters tending to use legally owned handguns, and other public shooters being more likely to acquire firearms illegally. The Violence Project's comprehensive mass shooting database also showed that mass shootings tend to occur in clusters, that mass shooters share
20562-978: The widespread chronic gap between people's expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, perpetrators' desire for fame and notoriety, toxic masculinity (mass shootings are perpetrated almost exclusively by men and boys), and a failure of government background checks due to incomplete databases and/or staff shortages. Feminist activist and psychotherapist Harriet Fraad and Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff contend that "American hyper-capitalism" fosters loneliness and social alienation among American men who become mass shooters. A 2019 analysis of mass shootings from 1990 to 2015 published in BMC Public Health found that communities with rising levels of income inequality are at an increased risk of mass shootings. A British Journal of Political Science study first published in 2017 (and in print in 2019) found that increase in proximity to mass public shootings in
20711-457: Was a frontline responder, with him assuming someone else was in command. The National Incident Management System , which guides all levels of government on how to respond to mass emergency events, says that the first person on scene is the incident commander. DPS officials have described Arredondo as the incident commander and identified him as giving the order to treat the situation as a barricaded subject. Arredondo said that he attempted to open
20860-403: Was interviewed again in mid-June and asked about 911 calls made from inside the classroom, Pargas said he cannot remember, and does not mention that he had called his department's dispatchers, who told him about 911 calls from children inside the classroom. Instead, Pargas said: "The last thing we thought was that [the shooter] had actually shot the kids. We thought he had shot up in the air, broken
21009-443: Was interviewed by authorities two days after the shooting, he did not mention that he had known at the time that there were children in the classroom with the shooter. Pargas said that he had officer Ruben Ruiz removed from the hallway after Ruiz said that Ruiz's wife was shot in her classroom, because "we were just afraid that he was gonna try to run in the classroom and try to do what I wanted to do if I could have done it". When Pargas
21158-452: Was killed. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are assisting local police in the investigation. Ramos' guns and magazines were recovered by law enforcement for analysis. Two days after the shooting, state officials said that the Texas Ranger Division was investigating local police's conduct during the incident. On May 29,
21307-421: Was killed. He was frequently bullied at school, and Lt. Chris Olivarez from Texas DPS claimed that Ramos had no friends. Furthermore, he did not have a criminal record or any documented mental health issues . However, he had searched the term " sociopath " and received an email about possible treatment. He had also previously posted violent threats online. School officials at Uvalde High School withdrew him from
21456-489: Was only nominally correlated with gun ownership and that gun ownership was not statistically associated with the mass shooting rate with or without gun law permissiveness being adjusted . A 2019 study published in The BMJ conducted a cross-sectional time series study of U.S. states from 1998 to 2015; the study found that "States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings, and
21605-430: Was provided with six keys, which he tried on a door adjacent to the room where the gunman was, but none opened that door. He stated he later received another 20-30 keys which also did not work, and that eventually, other officers called his cellphone to inform him they had obtained a suitable key. Arredondo denied cowardice and incompetence, stating that law enforcement's "objective was to save as many lives as we could, and
21754-643: Was rated " academically acceptable " by the Texas Education Agency . The district superintendent is Ashley Chohlis. In 1949, the Batesville Independent School District began sending its students to Uvalde High School . In 1970, students held a strike and filed a lawsuit against the district's board of trustees, accusing the group of not responding to complaints filed by parents, who requested Spanish-language medium communications and giving appropriate accommodations to English as
21903-599: Was reported to Yubo, but no action was taken. Up until a month before the shooting, Ramos worked at a local Wendy's and had been employed there for at least a year. According to the store's night manager, he went out of his way to keep to himself. One of his coworkers said he was occasionally rude to his female coworkers, to whom he sent inappropriate text messages, and would intimidate coworkers at his job by asking them, "Do you know who I am?" Ramos' coworkers referred to him by names including "school shooter" because he had long hair and frequently wore black clothing. A year before
22052-423: Was the incident commander at the time. It has been alleged that Arredondo believed no more lives were at risk and that he wanted more equipment and officers before conducting a tactical breach. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the shooting: The children were in the fourth grade. The teachers taught in the same fourth-grade classroom. Eighteen people were injured: fourteen children, one teacher,
22201-522: Was true for mass shootings that were crime-, social-, and domestic violence-related. However mass shootings that did not fit any of these categories were geographically distributed more evenly across the U.S. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings per one million people), followed by much lower rates in Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings per million) and Illinois (3.6 mass shootings per million) According to The New York Times , there
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