Sunrise host Natalie Barr has made a disturbing observation about gun culture in the United States in the wake of a mass shooting at a Texas highschool.
The Sunrise host reacted to the heartbreaking scenes where 18 students and a teacher were slaughtered by an 18-year-old gunman, the latest mass shooting to rock the country.
Barr said the atrocity was ‘horrendous’ and doubted whether a massive overhaul of firearm legislation would make a meaningful impact on America’s gun culture.
‘There are so many millions of guns on streets in the US, it does make you wonder how much difference it would make if you did something now,’ she said on Wednesday morning.
‘You’ve got to try something though,’ co-host David Koch responded.
Barr added changes in government drive increases in gun sales because owners fear they will lose their right to arms.
‘And every time a Democrat is elected they all go out and buy more because they are worried that they will crackdown on the laws,’ she said.
‘It is horrendous.’
Gun purchases reached record highs in the lead-up to the 2020 election, with Republican Donald Trump losing to current President Joe Biden.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott named 18-year-old Salvador Roma, a student at Uvalde High School, as the gunman who opened fire at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon. The name was later clarified to Salvador Ramos.
His student victims were aged between seven and 11, CNN’s Ed Lavandera reported.
‘He shot and killed – horrifically and incomprehensibly – 14 students and killed a teacher,’ Abbott said at a press briefing.
‘There are families that are in mourning right now. And the state of Texas is in mourning with them.’
Ramos’s social media was full of photos of guns. He messaged a girl he knew on Instagram, tagging her in a photo of the guns.
Robb Elementary School, which has 600 students enrolled, is located in the city of Uvalde, hometown of Matthew McConaughey, 60 miles east of the Mexican border and 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Ramos, equipped with a handgun and possibly a rifle, allegedly shot his grandmother, whose condition is not yet known, before entering the school and opening fire, Abbott said. The shooting started around 11:32am.
Photos show a pickup truck that crashed outside the school, which, according to Abbott, Ramos abandoned before entering the school.
Additionally, thirteen children are being treated at the Uvalde Memorial emergency room as well as a 45-year-old man who suffered a ‘graze.’
University Health San Antonio also confirmed they received a child whose condition is currently unknown and a 66-year-old woman who is critical condition.
It was the deadliest such incident since 14 high school students and three adult staff were killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018 – and the worst at an elementary school since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed.