Pope ‘heartbroken’ by Texas school shooting, calls for gun control

A gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest U.S. school shooting for nearly a decade, prompting President Joe Biden to urge Americans to confront the country’s gun lobby and pressure Congress to tighten gun laws.

Authorities said Salvador Ramos, 18, on Tuesday shot his grandmother, who survived, before fleeing and crashing his car near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing at least 21 people before being killed, apparently shot by police.

Officers saw the gunman, clad in body armor, emerge from the crashed vehicle carrying a rifle.

They said he acted alone; the motive was unclear.

Meanwhile,Pope Francis on Wednesday said he was “heartbroken” by the shooting at a school in Texas that killed at least 19 children and two teachers, calling for greater controls on weapons.

Francis said of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas “I am heartbroken by the massacre at the elementary school in Texas. I pray for the children and the adults who were killed and for their families.

“It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons. Let us all make a commitment so that tragedies like this cannot happen again.’’

Speaking from the White House hours after the shooting, a visibly shaken President Joe Biden urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms safety laws.

Francis has often taken on the weapons industry. In 2015 he said people who manufacture weapons or invest in the industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian.