After Uvalde School Massacre, Texas Native Selena Gomez Says, ‘If Children Aren’t Safe at School Where Are They Safe?’

Gil Kaufman
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Grand Prairie, Texas native Selena Gomez urged politicians to take decisive action in the wake of the horrific grade school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday (May 24) in which an armed 18-year-old allegedly killed 19 children and 2 adults. “Today in my home state of Texas 18 innocent students were killed while simply trying to get an education. A teacher killed doing her job; an invaluable yet sadly under appreciated job. If children aren’t safe at school where are they safe?” Gomez wrote.

In a follow up tweet, the singer expressed what many Americans were feeling in response to the 27th school shooting of 2022, which has also seen 212 mass shootings in 145 days so far. “It’s so frustrating and I’m not sure what to say anymore. Those in power need to stop giving lip service and actually change the laws to prevent these shootings in the future,” Gomez wrote in her second message, which included a link to the Everytown For Gun Safety Action Fund.

More from Billboard

In an emotional prime time address, a clearly shaken President Biden expressed his frustration at the refusal by some members of Congress to pass any substantive gun control legislation in the wake of the nation’s second mass shooting incident in two weeks. “Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?” Biden asked.

“The gun manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons, which make them the most and largest profit,” Biden said. “For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry. Where in God’s name is our backbone?”

The unspeakable act of violence against children at Robb Elementary School committed by the alleged shooter wearing body armor — who reportedly murdered his grandmother before opening fire at the school two days before summer break — only ended after a border patrol agent in the area responded and killed the attacker as he hid behind a barricade.

The Daily Beast reported that a parent on the scene said the shooter opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom near the entrance, sending children scrambling out of windows, with many hiding at a nearby funeral home. Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez described the man as “shooting children, teachers, whoever was in his way, he was shooting everybody.”

The massacre came 10 days after an heavily armed 18-year-old white supremacist opened fire and allegedly killed 10 people in a Buffalo, New York supermarket where he reportedly went to specifically target and murder Black shoppers.

In addition to the many Democratic politicians and gun control advocates pleading with the nation’s leaders to finally take decisive action to enact any common sense gun legislation, many specifically called out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who in June signed 7 laws shoring up Second Amendment gun rights in the state, including one that protects the right to possess or transport silencers and one allowing Texans to carry a handgun with a license.

Many artists also reacted to the slaughter of the children and teachers at Robb Elementary, which came nearly 10 years after a 20-year-old gunman killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Among them was Taylor Swift, who tweeted, “Filled with rage and grief, and so broken by the murders in Uvalde. By Buffalo, Laguna Woods and so many others. By the ways in which we, as a nation, have become conditioned to unfathomable and unbearable heartbreak. Steve’s words ring so true and cut so deep.”

The latter comment was a nod to an emotional statement from Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr — whose father was killed by gunmen in Beirut in 1984 — shortly before his team was set to play a playoff game at the home arena of the Dallas Mavericks, which is 400 miles from the scene of the mass killing. “When are we gonna do something!” Kerr said during a pre-game press conference. “I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”

See Gomez’s tweets below.

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