Politics

An 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 young children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas. After a stand-off with law-enforcement officers he was shot dead by a border-patrol agent. Parents were asked to provide dna samples to help identify the children’s bodies. The perpetrator had a semi-automatic rifle and wore body armour, as did the gunman who shot and killed ten black people at a supermarket in Buffalo on May 14th. It was the worst school shooting in America since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. The fbi reported this week that the number of “active shooter” incidents, not counting episodes of gang violence or domestic disputes, rose by more than 50% last year to 61.