News of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas last week has gripped much of the world in recent days.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 young children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, Texas.
The horrific incident continues a sickening trend south of the border, where school shootings are absurdly commonplace. The May 24 incident marked the 27th school shooting in the U.S. this year, according to National Public Radio. It was also the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut in December 2012.
While mass shootings occur all over the world, the U.S. is the only country where these types of tragedies occur with such frequency.
We as a small newsroom in Alberta do not hold the answers as to what needs to change in order to stop these tragic incidents from occurring time and time again. Enacting stricter gun laws is obviously a huge part of it, but gun culture and the second amendment are so entrenched in the U.S. that stricter laws alone will probably not be enough to quell this systemic violence. And the U.S. gun lobby is too far deep in the pockets of federal politicians for us to expect any serious preventative measures.
According to a New York Times report, Robb Elementary had plenty of protocols in place to prepare for the likelihood of a school shooting. The Uvalde County school division conducted emergency drills for students to prepare for an active shooter scenario, invested in hiring armed security officers, and even used special software to monitor students' social media posts to scope out potential threats, according to the New York Times.
Tragically, these measures were not enough to prevent a terrorist from ending the lives of more than 20 people, and ruining the lives of many, many more.
