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Aug 11, 2023

Uvalde Elementary School Shooting: As Uvalde Meets to Mourn, a Debate Unfolds Over the Commander’s Decision

A few hundred people gathered Saturday for a vigil as residents asked if lives

A few hundred people gathered Saturday for a vigil as residents asked if lives could have been saved. President Biden plans to visit families and attend church services in Uvalde on Sunday.

Follow today's latest news on the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting.

J. David Goodman, Mike Baker, Eileen Sullivan and Edgar Sandoval

UVALDE, Texas — From the first minutes after a gunman began shooting, officers descended on Robb Elementary School. Local police from the town of Uvalde. County sheriff's deputies. Agents from the federal Border Patrol.

But none of the growing number of agencies had control over the scores of officers at the scene on Tuesday of what would become the deadliest school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago.

That fell to the chief of a small police department created only four years ago to help provide security at Uvalde's eight schools. Its chief, Pedro Arredondo, had ordered the assembled officers to hold off on storming the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman had already fired more than 100 rounds at the walls, the door and the terrified fourth-graders locked inside with him, the state police said.

As Uvalde lurched into a holiday weekend of somber gatherings and free public barbecues, questions mounted over Chief Arredondo, the role of the police and whether any of the 21 lives that were lost could have been saved.

At a vigil on Saturday evening, hundreds of mourners met in the parking lot behind Sacred Heart Catholic Church and were urged by the pastor not to dwell in anger. On Sunday, emotions will run high again with a scheduled visit from President Biden.

The degree to which some law enforcement officers on the scene disagreed with the decision to hold back became more apparent on Saturday, as more became known about their frustrations in the protracted chaos of Tuesday's shooting.

Specially trained agents from the Border Patrol, who arrived more than 40 minutes after the shooting had begun, had yelled for permission to go in and confront the gunman. "What is your problem?" they asked, according to an official briefed on the response.

Inside the classrooms, children whose classmates lay dead around them quietly called 911 over and over again, at times pleading with dispatchers to send the police in to rescue them.

Roland Gutierrez, who represents the area in the State Senate, said the family of one of the children killed told him that their daughter had been struck by a single bullet to the back and had bled to death. "It is possible she could have been saved, if they had done their jobs," Mr. Gutierrez said.

Ultimately, the police officers assembled outside won permission to enter the classroom. A team of tactical officers from the Border Patrol and local police agencies breached the door and killed the 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, after he had killed 19 children and two teachers inside.

The decision to wait appeared to those agents at the time, and to many policing experts afterward, as out-of-step with practices that have been in place in departments around the country for two decades since the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in 1999.

"The change from Columbine has not necessarily been accepted by agencies across the country, and that's what you saw in this situation," said Chuck Wexler, the head of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank. "There are still departments in this country where there is ambiguity about this policy."

Others, including some that have provided active shooter trainings, have counseled that rushing in may not always be the best approach. "When the story is ultimately told, he did exactly what they were trained for and based on pragmatic experience in the fog of war," said John-Michael Keyes, whose group conducts active shooter trainings for police officers and school districts in Texas, speaking of Chief Arredondo.

Two officers from the Uvalde Police Department were shot through the locked door to the classroom in the first minutes of the attack, and fell back into the hallway with grazing wounds.

Officers were told, under Chief Arredondo's direction, that the situation had evolved from one with an active shooter — which would call for immediately attacking the gunman, even before rescuing other children — to one with a barricaded subject, which would call for a slower approach, officials said.

That appeared to be an incorrect assessment, according to the state police director, Steven McCraw: Gunfire could sporadically be heard inside the rooms, including on continuing 911 calls by the children.

Part of the investigation into the shooting and the police response included whether Chief Arredondo knew about the 911 calls that were coming in, suggesting a possible breakdown in communications during the chaotic and deadly event, according to an official briefed on the inquiry, which is being led by the Texas Rangers.

Investigators were also looking into whether an attempt was made, during the standoff, to take incident command away from Chief Arredondo.

Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who later served as the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said he was surprised to hear that the chief of the school district police force, which has only six officers, was the incident commander during the shooting.

While the school grounds may have been the district's jurisdiction, Mr. Kerlikowske said, he would have expected the district to promptly defer control to the city police department, which would have more experience with major incidents. He said city police might then pass along control to an agency like the Texas Department of Public Safety, once it was established on scene.

But, Mr. Kerlikowske said, he could also see a situation where the larger agency might need to come in and put pressure on the early commander to relinquish control.

Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, said that in no case would Border Patrol agents have sought to assume command themselves.

"Every single training that is given, you have an incident commander, and that incident commander has the authority to make all the decisions," Mr. Judd said on Saturday. That is what they are trained to do, he said. And when the agents arrive long after the situation has begun, he said, it is even more important that they follow the chain of command.

The Border Patrol agents who arrived at the chaotic scene on Tuesday were surprised at the absence of specially equipped and trained officers from the local police department who were capable of raiding the classrooms, said the official familiar with the federal agency's response.

The Uvalde Police Department, which has employed about 40 sworn officers in recent years, uses some of its members as a kind of SWAT team, often for drug seizures, according to the department's annual reports. It was not clear why a Border Patrol team that was a 40-minute drive away was instead asked to lead the assault.

The failures in the response probably extended beyond the decisions made by one small police department, said Mr. Gutierrez, the state senator.

"How can you blame it all on a chief of police of a school district with six cops?" Mr. Gutierrez said. "Everybody failed here."

Among the first 911 calls of a gunman on the loose on Tuesday came not from the school but from a house nearby. The gunman, who lived with his grandmother a few streets away, had shot her in the face — a bullet striking near her right eye — and fled toward the school with his weapons, two AR-15-style rifles.

Maria and Gilberto Gallegos, two retired neighbors who were outside at the time, heard two gun blasts from directly across the street. All of a sudden, the gunman came bounding out of the front door with a backpack and a duffel bag and jumped into his grandmother's pickup truck.

"He didn't know how to drive," said Gilbert Gallegos, the couple's son, who relayed their account. "He was just revving, pushing down on the gas. Finally, he peels out, and the tires are throwing pebbles all over."

At that point, he said, the gunman's grandmother, Celia Martinez Gonzales, walked out of her house, her gait steady but her face streaming with blood.

"She says in Spanish to my parents, ‘Look what happened,’" Gilbert Gallegos said. Ms. Gallegos called 911 — first at 11:33 a.m. and then two minutes later. The police arrived soon after, followed by an ambulance.

Even before they arrived, he said, his parents could hear gunfire in the area of Robb Elementary School.

Chief Arredondo did not respond to multiple requests for comment on his department's response to the shooting. Nor did the chief of the Uvalde Police Department, Daniel Rodriguez, or several other members of the department and school district leadership.

In many cities across the country, including New York, city police oversee officers who patrol the schools; school districts across Texas have dedicated police departments that operate independently.

The Uvalde Consolidated School District's police department was formed just four years ago. Before that, the city's police department provided school officers, said Mickey Gerdes, who served as board president at the time. But the district and the department could not overcome scheduling conflicts and discussions about costs.

Mr. Gerdes said part of the decision to switch was in response to the rise in school shootings and the desire to increase security at schools. (The school police officer assigned to Robb Elementary was not on campus when Tuesday's attack began.)

Chief Arredondo, a veteran officer of several departments who won election to the City Council two weeks before the shooting, began leading the department in early 2020, a month before the pandemic hit.

He had worked as a top official in the Uvalde Police Department and for the sheriff's department in Webb County, along the border. Before returning to Uvalde, Chief Arredondo led a school district police department in the border city of Laredo, where he had a reputation for being "a tough guy in law enforcement, no nonsense" from his time in the county sheriff's office, said Sergio Mora, a political consultant in Laredo.

During Chief Arredondo's two years, he expanded the department's tiny ranks, adding two officers last year.

Also during those two years, the school district held at least two trainings for how to deal with a gunman opening fire in a school.

Mr. Gerdes, the former school board president, said he had known Chief Arredondo for more than two decades. He said he feared the criticism directed at his handling of Tuesday's shooting reflected the desire for a scapegoat. "He's a good man," Mr. Gerdes said. "He's a decent man."

But the revelations about just how long police officers delayed entering the classroom has sparked anger around Uvalde and demands for an explanation.

Jay Martin, 48, who lives near the school, said he ran to the scene with a friend after they first heard gunshots.

His own daughter, now 12, had once been a student of Eva Mireles, one of the teachers killed, he said on Saturday as he stood at a victims’ memorial in a central square.

"Why did they take so long? That's part of being a police officer, putting your life on the line for someone else," he said.

Now, he added, "there's a lot of furious people."

Frances Robles, Serge F. Kovaleski and Karen Zraick contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed research.

Vimal Patel

President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, will travel to Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday to visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman on Tuesday killed 19 students and two teachers. At noon, the Bidens are scheduled to attend Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. They will meet with survivors, families of victims and first responders later in the day, the White House said in a statement.

Rick Rojas

UVALDE, Texas — On Saturday night, the Uvalde community gathered again, this time in the parking lot behind Sacred Heart Catholic Church, remembering the teachers and students killed at Robb Elementary School and finding ways to navigate their grief together.

"We want you to know you are not alone," Jaclyn Gonzales, a parishioner at the church who organized the vigil in roughly 24 hours, told the crowd of a few hundred.

By the time they assembled, filling the parking lot as they set out folding chairs, the sun that had scorched Uvalde on Saturday had settled, giving way to golden light and a pleasant breeze. Stuffed animals, rosaries and snacks were handed out. A memorial had been set up with photographs of the victims along with flowers and candles.

Father Eduardo Morales, the pastor at Sacred Heart, acknowledged the anguish surging through the community, and that anger was a natural part of grief. But he cautioned the crowd to not dwell on it. "It's OK to be angry," the priest said, adding, "Do not allow it to turn into hate."

People from the parish and the broader community took turns stepping to a microphone, sharing a personal note about their own grief. A local optometrist noted that six of the victims had been his patients. Then, they read from profiles that had been published by the news media in Texas and beyond attempting to capture the essence of the lives that were lost, however short.

"Tess liked TikTok dancing videos, Ariana Grande and getting her hair curled, The Washington Post reported," one of the community members said, discussing Tess Marie Mata, 10, who also played the same position on her softball team as her favorite Houston Astros player (second base).

The remembrances were punctuated by songs sung by young musicians from the community. "So lay down your burdens, lay down your shame," they sang. "All who are broken, lift up your face. Oh, wanderer come home. You’re not too far. So, lay down your hurt, lay down your heart. Come as you are."

Rick Rojas

UVALDE, Texas — On Tuesday, an hour after learning that 19 children had been killed at Robb Elementary School, parishioners of Sacred Heart Catholic Church gathered for an impromptu Mass. Many of them returned the next evening for another Mass and then the evening after that for another — a community in shock, staggering together through a haze of sadness, confusion and anger.

On Saturday, the congregation assembled again, this time for the first regular weekend service at Sacred Heart. But now, some parishioners said, that haze was fading. The depth of Uvalde's loss was becoming agonizingly clear. Such was the case across Uvalde this weekend as church services marked the start of days of mourning. A series of funerals is scheduled in the days ahead, including several at Sacred Heart. A large vigil is also taking place at the church on Saturday night.

In his sermon, the Rev. Eduardo Morales, the pastor at Sacred Heart, encouraged the congregation to follow the example established by Jesus’ closest followers after his death. He noted that, as Catholics, they were celebrating the ascension into heaven of Jesus.

"Yes, we will miss them," he told the congregation. But he encouraged the parishioners to remember that those who had died were not completely gone. "The time will come when we, too, will come to Jesus, and it won't only be Jesus there," Father Morales said. "Maybe death — we should not see it as a leap into darkness but a leap into light."

As the community navigated its sorrow, he urged the congregation to be supportive and loving, and to embrace the memory of those who were lost.

"Allow their love, their spiritual presence, to continue to be with us," Father Morales said. "When we don't believe, that is when they truly die, and that's not fair to them. Allow them to continue to live among us, allow them to continue to be part of us."

Vimal Patel

The mother of the gunman who fatally shot 19 children and two teachers at a Texas school on Tuesday asked for forgiveness in an interview with a CNN affiliate posted on Friday.

"Forgive me," Adriana Martinez, the mother of Salvador Ramos, told Televisa, a Spanish-language outlet. "Forgive my son."

The gunman in Uvalde, Texas, was killed after a Border Patrol tactical unit breached the Robb Elementary School classrooms where he had barricaded himself, 78 minutes after he had entered them.

Prior to the attack in the small town west of San Antonio, the 18-year-old shot his grandmother — Ms. Martinez's mother — in the face and left her wounded in her home. The grandmother, Celia Martinez Gonzales, who survived, went to a neighboring couple's home across the street, where the couple contacted the police before Ms. Gonzales was taken to a hospital.

"I have no words," Ms. Martinez said in the interview, which was conducted on Wednesday. "I have no words to say. I don't know what he was thinking. He had his reasons for doing what he did. And please don't judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me."

The authorities have said they had found no apparent motive or warning signs, with no documented history of mental illness or criminal record. Ms. Martinez described her son as "very quiet."

When a reporter asked Ms. Martinez what reasons he could have had to carry out such a horrific act, she replied, "I have no words. I don't know."

Photographs by Ivan Pierre Aguirre and Christopher Lee

Photographs and Text by Meridith Kohut

"It's a really bad time right now in Uvalde," said Jody Clark, 30, as he checked the temperature on the brisket that he and friends stayed up all night smoking to serve at a fund-raiser on Friday in the tight-knit Texas community.

"It's our hometown," he said. "It hits really hard at home."

The fund-raiser was being held across the street from Oasis Outback, the store where officials say a gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School purchased his weapons.

In the face of the unimaginable, the people of Uvalde have pulled together to offer each other support. Hundreds of people lined up to donate blood in the parking lot of the Herby Ham Activity Center. People gathered around the clock at makeshift memorials to remember the victims.

At St. Philip's Episcopal Church on Thursday, community members attended a service where they worshiped and prayed together. Candles were lit for the victims in the shape of a cross. The name of each person who was killed was read aloud. It was one the many vigils and masses, which have given those who live in Uvalde a few moments to grieve together.

Luke Vander Ploeg

HOUSTON — Saturday's session of the N.R.A.'s annual meeting was marked by controversy both inside and outside the convention hall.

Across the street, chants of "Say their names" and "It's on your hands" greeted attendees as protesters gathered behind a police barrier for the second day in a row. Outside the convention hall, N.R.A. members lined up to watch the protesters. Police officers on foot and horseback patrolled the road in between.Levi Klein, 23, was protesting. A lifelong Houston resident, Mr. Klein says he grew up with guns. He said his father was a member of the N.R.A., though he wasn't sure if he was at the convention that day. "I know how profound and in the culture it is for Texans to own guns," he said. "Protesting and showing people that we want a change is the only way that we’re going to make enough noise for anything to happen."Around midafternoon about 10 members of the far-right, white nationalist group the Proud Boys arrived and began their own counterprotest. The two groups ended up in verbal confrontation. Police stepped in to keep the two groups apart until the Proud Boys left a short time later.

Inside the convention hall, the annual membership meeting of the group was not without controversy either. The meeting functioned as a forum for N.R.A. leadership to address members and for members to present motions on issues facing the organization to be voted on. During the debate on a motion to commend its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, for his leadership, some members rose to criticize him and the board of directors.

"In the last few years, you have brought questioning and shame down on the N.R.A.," said one member who got up to speak. He and others cited accusations of mismanagement and misuse of N.R.A. funds that have been leveled against Mr. LaPierre in recent years along with what they saw as the organization's failure to adequately defend Second Amendment rights.

"While I appreciate what Mr. LaPierre has done," said another member who rose to speak against the resolution, "Mr. LaPierre is not the N.R.A. I am the N.R.A. These people are the N.R.A." His comments were met with scattered applause.

The carnage in Uvalde or issues surrounding mass shootings were almost entirely absent from Saturday's discussion, and the members largely supported Mr. LaPierre's leadership in the face of allegations of mismanagement.

"This is something that was started from our political enemies, and some of our internal enemies jumped on this to try to foster their positions," said another man who rose to talk. "It's time we pulled together and fought the enemy, not internally."

The discussion comes as the group continues to battle a lawsuit by Letitia James, the New York attorney general. The suit, which began in 2020, has accused the N.R.A. of corruption and misspending and originally sought to shutter the institution. A judge in New York State Court recently ruled that the lawsuit cannot force the N.R.A. to disband but that Ms. James could still seek a resolution through fines or other penalties.

In the end, the motion to commend Mr. LaPierre was passed by a strong majority. N.R.A. board members will vote Monday on whether to re-elect Mr. LaPierre for another one-year term as chief executive.

Serge F. Kovaleski

It had been an uneventful morning on Tuesday for retirees Maria and Gilberto Gallegos.

Mr. Gallegos, 82, was in the back yard of their home on Diaz Street in Uvalde, Texas, and Ms. Gallegos, 76, was out front watering her flowers when the couple heard two gun blasts directly across the street.

The gunman had just shot Celia Martinez Gonzales, his grandmother, in the face in the house where he had been living with her. One of the bullets hit her near her right eye. The other round missed her, according to what Mr. and Mrs. Gallegos told Gilbert, their son. (They did not respond to calls seeking an interview.)

All of a sudden, the gunman came bounding out of the front door, which he had left open, with a backpack and a duffel bag, and he got into his grandmother's truck that was sitting in the home's white gravel driveway, the son said.

"He didn't know how to drive, so he is having a hard time getting the truck into gear," Gilbert Gallegos said. "He was just revving, pushing down on the gas. Finally, he peels out, and the tires are throwing pebbles all over."

At that point, the grandmother walked out of her house, her face streaming with blood. But her gait was steady. "She says in Spanish to my parents, ‘Look what happened,’" Mr. Gallegos said. "None of them knew if he was going to come back and finish the job."

Consequently, he said, his father took Ms. Gonzales to the back yard of his home and applied pressure to her wound to try to staunch the bleeding. Meanwhile, Ms. Gallegos called 911 — first at 11:33 a.m. and then two minutes later.

"With all the adrenaline, she felt it was taking too long," the son said, adding that Ms. Gonzales "was coherent and talking. She's tough."

The police soon arrived, followed by an ambulance. But before that, Maria and Gilberto Gallegos and Ms. Gonzales started to hear gunfire in the area of Robb Elementary School.

Karen Zraick

People from Uvalde and as far as Atlanta gathered in the town square on Saturday, where piles of flowers and stuffed animals and dozens of candles had been placed underneath white crosses for each of the shooting victims. "It just kind of makes it a little more real," said Michelle C. Gonzales, 46, a tax preparer from San Antonio, after she surveyed the scene. Children and parents walked around the crosses with somber faces, some wiping away tears.

J. David Goodman

Part of the investigation into the shooting and the police response includes whether Chief Pete Arredondo, the head of the Uvalde school district's small police department and the incident commander at the scene, knew about the 911 calls that were coming in, suggesting a possible breakdown in communications during the chaotic and deadly event, according to an official briefed on the inquiry, which is being led by the Texas Rangers.

Mike Ives

In the seven years that Greg Abbott has served as governor of Texas, dozens of people have been killed in mass shootings across the state. In a few cases, his administration has responded to the violence by indicating an openness to tightening the state's gun laws.

But not much has changed, and those laws remain some of the least restrictive in the United States.

In May 2018, in response to shootings in Sutherland Springs and Santa Fe that left a total of 36 people dead, Mr. Abbott issued a 43-page report calling for more school security and preparation for "active shooters on campus," among other measures.

The Republican governor's report also asked state lawmakers to "study the possibility of creating" a so-called red flag law, one that would allow the police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people a judge considers to be a danger to themselves or to others.

The results of Mr. Abbott's report included a $1 million item in the state's budget for the Department of Public Safety to promote safe gun storage, as well as a state law abolishing a cap on the number of school marshals who are allowed to carry guns on public school campuses.

But, unlike Florida, where state lawmakers passed a red flag law weeks after 17 people were fatally shot at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, the idea for a similar measure in Texas died in a state legislature committee. One reason was public opposition from Mr. Abbott's own lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick.

"Regarding the topic of ‘Red Flag’ laws, which was discussed today in the select committee, I have never supported these policies, nor has the majority of the Texas Senate," Mr. Patrick said in a statement in July 2018.

A similar pattern played out in the summer of 2019, after a gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso and another killed seven others and wounded at least 21 more in Odessa.

A few days after the Odessa massacre, Mr. Patrick publicly endorsed expanding the state's background checks to private gun sales, telling The Dallas Morning News that he was "willing to take an arrow" from the gun lobby to champion such a measure.

But Mr. Patrick later went quiet on the idea of background checks. And last year, Mr. Abbott, whose policies have been drifting rightward in recent years, signed a wide-ranging law ending a requirement for Texans to obtain a license to carry handguns. Now, virtually anyone over the age of 21 is allowed to do so.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Abbott said that although the gunman who killed 19 children in Uvalde had no known history of mental issues, he believed that the area near the school lacked sufficient access to mental health care. "We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health," he said.

He did not make any specific proposals for legislation that would address gun violence.

Rebecca Halleck

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault weapons in an impromptu interview with CNN after attending a memorial service for a victim of the Buffalo shooting. "Let's have an assault weapons ban," she said. "Do you know what an assault weapon is? Do you know how an assault weapon was designed? It was designed for a specific purpose, to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society."

Katie Benner

Two of the nation's most prominent police organizations told Congress on Friday that they were willing to discuss gun policies in an effort to reduce gun violence, in response to the recent mass shootings in Texas, New York and California.

"Our organizations, which represent our nation's chiefs and the majority of our rank-and-file officers, believe that it is imperative that we identify workable solutions that will allow us to dramatically reduce the number of Americans killed by gun violence," the presidents of the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police wrote in a letter to Congress.

The letter marked the first time that the nation's largest organizations of law enforcement officers and leadership have commented on gun violence.

The policing groups said in a separate statement that the more than 30 people who were murdered this month by gunmen "serve as a stark and tragic reminder of the need for concerted action."

"It is imperative that we address gun violence and identify workable solutions in order to dramatically reduce the number of Americans killed from unprovoked and unspeakable violence," the groups said.

Linda Qiu

Prominent Republicans defended gun rights at the National Rifle Association's convention on Friday, with some misleading claims about the efficacy of gun restrictions, gun ownership trends and school shootings.

what was said

"As for so-called assault rifles, which the left and the media love to demonize, these guns were banned for 10 years from 1994 to 2004. And the Department of Justice examined the effect of the ban and concluded it had zero statistically significant effect on violent crime." — Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas

This is exaggerated. The Justice Department commissioned a 2004 study on the effect of the 1994 assault weapons ban. The study found that, if renewed, "the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement" as assault weapons were rarely used in the crimes.

But Christopher Koper, the lead author of that study, has repeatedly said that the ban had mixed effects overall.

"My work is often cited in misleading ways that don't give the full picture," Mr. Koper previously told The New York Times. "These laws can modestly reduce shootings overall" and reduce the number and severity of mass shootings.

what was said

"Inner-city schools rarely have these kinds of mass shootings. I didn't know that until just recently. Think of that. They rarely have this problem despite being located in very tough neighborhoods, in many cases where there's tremendous levels of high crime and violence. They’re much more dangerous outside the school than inside. The reason is that for decades inner-city schools have had much stronger security measures in place in the school itself, including metal detectors and, yes, armed guards." — former President Donald J. Trump

This is misleading. Mr. Trump has a point that high-fatality shootings perpetrated by a single person have mostly occurred in suburban and rural schools, but the notion that schools in cities have been spared from gun violence is inaccurate. Moreover, Mr. Trump's suggestion that the presence of armed guards deters mass shootings is not borne out by the evidence.

Edgar Sandoval

Gloria Jackson, who knew Mr. Arredondo when both served as board members at a shelter for battered women more than 10 years ago, said she remembered him for protecting the abused. "He was very friendly," Ms. Jackson said. "He really cared about helping battered women."

Edgar Sandoval

Sergio Mora, a political consultant in Laredo who knew Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, as a "tough guy" during his tenure with the Webb County Sheriff's office, said he could not reconcile the leader he knew then with the chief who held back police for nearly an hour as wounded children called 911 pleading for help. Seeing Mr. Arredondo's name in the news left him feeling confused and heartbroken. "What was going through his head?" Mr. Mora said, pausing to reconsider his next words. "On the face of it, it was a bad decision."

Rebecca Halleck

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke briefly at the funeral services for Ruth Whitfield, the oldest victim in the Buffalo shooting, on Saturday, saying she believes "our nation is experiencing an epidemic of hate." At the Mt. Olive Baptist Church, Ms. Harris drew a connection between Buffalo, Uvalde, Texas, and other recent shootings. "This is a moment that requires all God-loving people to stand up and say we will not stand for this; enough is enough," she said. "We will come together based on what we all know we have in common and we will not let those people who are motivated by hate separate us or make us feel fear."

David Yaffe-Bellany and Jessica Silver-Greenberg

The massacre on Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, has put a national spotlight on Daniel Defense, a Georgia-based business that made the military-style weapon used in the assault and has emerged as a trailblazer in an aggressive, boundary-pushing style of weapons marketing and sales.

Some of its advertisements invoke popular video games like "Call of Duty" and feature "Star Wars" characters and Santa Claus, messages that are likely to appeal to teenagers. The company was an early adopter of a direct-to-consumer business model that aimed to make buying military gear as simple as ordering from Amazon, enticing customers with "adventure now, pay later" installment plans that make expensive weaponry more affordable.

And the company's founder and chief executive, Marty Daniel, has fashioned himself as a provocateur who ridicules gun control proposals and uses publicity stunts to drum up sales. On its website, the company published a pop-up statement sending "thoughts and prayers" to the community. When the pop-up disappeared, the site highlighted a promotion, adorned with gold-encased bullets, for a sweepstakes to win $15,000 worth of guns or ammunition.

Daniel Defense is at the forefront of an industry that has grown increasingly aggressive in recent years as it tries to expand beyond its aging, mostly white customer base and resists the calls for stronger regulation that seem to intensify after every mass shooting.

"Daniel Defense is basically the poster child of this egregious, aggressive marketing," said Ryan Busse, a former executive at the gun company Kimber who is now an industry critic. "Marty Daniel burst in the door, a lot louder and more brazen than other gun makers, much like Donald Trump did on the political scene."

He added, "Through this company, you are telling the story of how the gun industry has become increasingly radicalized."

The Uvalde shooting has set in motion another round of soul-searching and rancor over the nation's gun laws and gun culture — nowhere more so than in Uvalde, a largely Mexican American city of 15,200 near the U.S. southern border.

Gun ownership is threaded into community life, where hunting is common and many people own multiple guns for protection.

Still, public opinion surveys and interviews with victims’ families and Uvalde residents suggest that many Texans are more open to gun control measures than their Republican leaders, and would support expanding background checks and raising the age requirement to buy assault-style rifles to 21 from 18.

The focus on guns and the company comes amid increased scrutiny of the botched police response to the attack in Uvalde. The revelation that a school police commander decided not to enter a pair of connected classrooms even as the gunman continued shooting has raised the painful possibility that the death toll would have been less if the police had taken action sooner.

"It was the wrong decision, period," the director of the state police, Steven C. McCraw, said on Friday after reading from the transcripts of children's calls to 911 and from a timeline of the police inaction during nearly 90 minutes of horror at Robb Elementary School. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed.

After days of shifting explanations and conflicting accounts, the disclosures by Mr. McCraw brought forth an eruption of shouts and emotional questioning.

For most of the time that the gunman was at the school, Mr. McCraw explained, he was inside the classrooms where nearly all of the killing took place, while as many as 19 police officers waited outside in the school hallway. Several people in the classrooms, including at least two students, called 911 over that horrifying stretch, begging for help from the police.

But the commander at the scene, Chief Pete Arredondo of the Uvalde school district police department, apparently believing that the suspect had barricaded himself in the classroom and that "there were no kids at risk," did not call for officers to rush in, as active shooter trainings have prescribed since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999.

The police finally entered the classroom 78 minutes after the shooter walked inside.

In other developments:

During his commencement address at University of Delaware on Saturday, President Biden spoke of the shooting in Uvalde and one at a supermarket in Buffalo earlier this month, saying: "You cannot outlaw tragedy — I know — but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we need to do to protect the lives of people and our children." The president will travel to Uvalde on Sunday to meet with the victims’ families.

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on military-style assault weapons in an impromptu interview with CNN after attending a memorial service for a victim of the Buffalo supermarket shooting.

The presidents of two of the nation's most prominent police organizations, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chief of Police, told Congress on Friday that they were willing to discuss gun policies in an effort to reduce gun violence, in response to the recent mass shootings in Texas, New York and California.

J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval, Karen Zraick, Rick Rojas, Frances Robles, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Rebecca Halleck, Jack Healy and Sarah Mervosh contributed.

Karen Zraick

A truckload of watermelons provided by two local businesses was parked on a street corner in Uvalde on Saturday to collect donations for families affected by the shooting. "We are 100 percent here for this community," said Tina Willis, who works for both Watermelons Unlimited and Affordable Storage. "We’re all born and raised here."

Jack Healy and Natalie Kitroeff

UVALDE, Texas — Living in a rural Texas town renowned for white-tailed deer hunting, where rifles are a regular prize at school raffles, Desirae Garza never thought much about gun laws. That changed after her 10-year-old niece, Amerie Jo, was fatally shot inside Robb Elementary School.

"You can't purchase a beer, and yet you can buy an AR-15," Ms. Garza said of the 18-year-old gunman who the authorities say legally bought two semiautomatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition days before killing 19 children and two teachers. "It's too easy."

But inside another Uvalde home, Amerie Jo's father, Alfred Garza III, had a sharply different view. In the wake of his daughter's killing, he said he was considering buying a holster to strap on the handgun he now leaves in his home or truck.

"Carrying it on my person is not a bad idea after all this," he said.

An anguished soul-searching over Texas’ gun culture and permissive gun laws is unfolding across the latest community to be shattered by a shooter's rampage.

Uvalde, a largely Mexican American city of 15,200 near the U.S. southern border, is a far different place from Parkland, Fla., or Newtown, Conn., which became centers of grass-roots gun control activism in the aftermath of the school shootings there.

Gun ownership is threaded into life here in a county that has elected conservative Democrats and twice supported former President Donald J. Trump. Several relatives of victims count themselves among Texas’ more than one million gun owners. Some grew up hunting and shooting. Others say they own multiple guns for protection.

In Uvalde, the debate has unfolded not through protests and marches, as it did after Parkland, but in quieter discussions inside people's living rooms and at vigils, in some cases exposing rifts within grieving families. The grandfather of one boy killed on Tuesday said he always keeps a gun under the seat of his truck to protect his family; the boy's grandmother now wants to limit gun access.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed a law last year making Texas a "Second Amendment sanctuary" from federal gun laws, and other Republicans have dismissed calls for tightening access to guns in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. They have instead called for improving school security and mental health counseling.

But public opinion surveys and interviews with victims’ families and Uvalde residents suggest that many Texans are more open to gun control measures than their Republican leaders, and would support expanding background checks and raising the age requirement to buy assault-style rifles to 21 from 18.

Trey Laborde, a local rancher, brought his gun to a fund-raiser for relatives of victims of the shooting, where he was helping to smoke meat. Mr. Laborde said he despises President Biden, thinks the 2020 election was stolen and recoils at calls to take away people's guns. He believes "all these teachers should be armed."

But he also wants more limits on gun access.

"I don't think that anybody should be able to buy a gun unless they’re 25," Mr. Laborde said. He was recently given an assault rifle as a gift by his father-in-law but said, "I don't think they should be sold," he said, adding: "Nobody hunts with those types of rifles."

Public support for some gun control measures has held steady throughout recent years of opinion polls, as Texas was rocked by deadly mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso and in the streets of Odessa.

In a February poll by the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project, 43 percent of Texans said they supported stricter gun laws while just 16 percent wanted looser rules. In earlier polls, majorities supported universal background checks and were against allowing gun owners to carry handguns in public without a license or training; 71 percent of Texans supported background checks on all gun purchases, according to a poll from the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project in 2021.

Three hundred miles away from Uvalde, raw divisions over gun rights in Texas were on vivid display on Friday as hundreds of gun control supporters protested outside an annual National Rifle Association convention in Houston. Inside, Mr. Trump and others blamed "evil" and an array of social ills for the attacks, but not easy access to guns.

Mr. Abbott withdrew from speaking in person at the convention and instead traveled to Uvalde amid mounting anger over revelations that the police response was delayed in confronting and killing the gunman.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Antonio, whose territory includes Uvalde, said the N.R.A. should have canceled its meeting in Houston. "The country is in mourning, but they are not," Gustavo García-Siller, the archbishop, said in an interview, calling the embrace of guns "a culture of death in our midst."

Vincent Salazar, 66, whose granddaughter Layla was killed in the Uvalde attack, said he had kept guns in his house for 30 years for protection. But as he grieved the girl who won three blue ribbons at Robb Elementary's Field Day, he said he wanted lawmakers to at least raise the age for selling long guns like the black AR-15-style rifle used in his granddaughter's killing.

"This freedom to carry, what did it do?" Mr. Salazar asked. "It killed."

Several parents and relatives of Uvalde's victims said they wanted politicians in Texas to follow the lead of six states that have raised the age for buying semiautomatic rifles to 21 from 18. But gun rights supporters are challenging those laws in court, and recently won a legal victory after an appeals court struck down California's ban on selling semiautomatic guns to young adults.

Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed inside Robb Elementary, carries a gun and fully supports the Second Amendment, having learned how to fire semiautomatic rifles at 18 when he enlisted in the U.S. Army. But he said the killing of Jacklyn and so many of her fourth-grade friends should force politicians into tightening gun measures.

"There should be a lot stricter laws," he said. "To buy a weapon at 18 — it's kind of ridiculous."

Even as many in Uvalde have said they want to focus their attention on the victims, the conversation about guns has been reverberating through town. Kendall White, who guides groups on hunting trips, helped cook at the barbecue fund-raiser for relatives of victims of the attack on Friday.

Mr. White said he would never give up the right to "legally go out and harvest an animal and bring it home to my kids." He crowed over the fact that his daughter shot her first white-tailed deer at the age of 3.

"She was sitting on my lap," he said.

Mr. White believes people are the problem — not guns. "Guns don't kill nobody, period," he said. "You’ve got to have somebody pull the trigger."

But the recent mass shootings have weighed on Mr. White, who is 45, and this one, in his hometown, left him gutted.

He says he wants some things to change.

"He should never have been able to get that gun," Mr. White said, referring to the gunman. "We should raise the age limit. We should do stronger background checks." There is room, he said, "for some compromises" on gun laws.

Ricardo García was working a shift as a groundskeeper at Uvalde Memorial Hospital on Tuesday when the first students from Robb Elementary were hustled inside the emergency room, followed by a group of parents. As the hours wore on, he said, the hospital began informing families that their children had died.

Mothers screamed the word "no" over and over. Fathers banged on the walls of the hospital.

Mr. García said he has never owned a gun and now believes the only way to solve gun violence in America is to ban them for everyone other than law enforcement.

"They’ve got to stop selling the guns," he said. "The governor's got to do something about it."

One child, who came in with blood on his shirt, told his parents that he was right next to the gunman as he was shooting, and now the boy couldn't hear out of one ear.

"He had an AR-15 man, inside a classroom," Mr. García said. "It's going to make a lot of noise for those kids."

The grief swirling through the little green house where Eliahana Torres once cared for her goldfish and practiced her softball swing into the night was still raw as relatives gathered to grapple with her killing.

An uncle, Leo Flores, said that someday, some other gunman would attack another school. He said the best hope for preventing more bloodshed was to arm and prepare teachers — a view shared by many conservative politicians and residents across Texas.

But inside the house, Eliahana's grandfather, Victor M. Cabrales, said the seeming inevitability of another mass shooting was a clarion call for stronger gun restrictions.

"It's because we don't do nothing," he said. "We need a change. A real change. Not just words."

Rick Rojas and Josh Peck contributed reporting.

Rebecca Halleck

During his commencement address at the University of Delaware Saturday, President Biden spoke of the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo this month. "You cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we need to do to protect the lives of people and our children," he said. The president is scheduled to travel to Uvalde tomorrow to meet with the victims’ families.

Rebecca Halleck

State Senator Roland Gutierrez of Texas said he expects a detailed report, including ballistics and a full timeline, from Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, next week. In a shaking voice, Senator Gutierrez told CNN's Boris Sanchez that "we’re all angry" and that "everybody is frustrated about the failures of what happened."

Luke Vander Ploeg

HOUSTON — After an opening day characterized by big name speakers, bombastic rhetoric and a mass of protesters just across the street from the convention hall doors, attendees at Saturday's session of the National Rifle Association annual meeting are likely to find a more subdued set of events.

Saturday kicked off with N.R.A. leaders addressing members of the organization. In the afternoon, the N.R.A. will give a political update centered on the Second Amendment and discuss the organization's plans for "the midterm election fight ahead to protect our rights" amid calls for gun safety regulation after the deadly shooting.

Those who attended Friday afternoon's Leadership Forum witnessed probably the most passionate moments of the convention. The forum consisted of a series of political speakers, including the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem; Senator Ted Cruz of Texas; and Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina. The speeches became more defiant as the night went on, each acknowledging the tragic murder of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, just days before but quickly pivoting to a full-throated defense of Second Amendment rights and a call for more armed security in American schools, despite the fact that the school had training for active shooters and the police on the scene waited to act.

The opening evening culminated in a speech by former President Donald J. Trump, which began as a discussion of gun rights that moved on to the talking points of a classic campaign rally, touching on inflation, the war in Ukraine and the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Michael D. Shear

Follow our live updates on President Biden's speech on gun control tonight.

WASHINGTON — Days after 19 children and two teachers were gunned down in Texas, politicians in Washington are tinkering around the edges of America's gun laws.

A bipartisan group of senators is scheduled to hold virtual meetings early next week and has some proposals on the table: the expansion of background checks, legal changes to prevent the mentally ill and teenagers from getting guns, and new rules for gun trafficking.

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and the leader of the effort, said he had not seen so much willingness to talk since 20 children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

But the emerging details of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday suggest that few of the proposals under discussion would have made much of a difference. The gunman did not have a criminal record that might have been caught by expanded background checks. There is no evidence that the gun had been part of a trafficking ring. And so far, there have not been reports of mental illness that might have triggered a so-called red flag law.

More far-reaching efforts — such as banning military-style weapons, raising the age for gun purchases and requiring licensing and registration for firearm ownership — have already been all but ruled out, the result of Republican opposition, Democratic resignation and court rulings.

This month, before the Texas shooting and another massacre at a grocery story in Buffalo, N.Y., a federal appeals court struck down a California law that banned the sale of some semiautomatic weapons to people under 21. Both shootings were committed by 18-year-olds.

The reaction in Washington to the horrific scenes is a familiar combination of pain and paralysis. There is a sense in Congress, at the White House and around the country that it should, somehow, be different this time.

In Uvalde, anguished parents grew angrier on Friday as a top state law enforcement official acknowledged that the police were wrong to have waited more than an hour to confront the gunman as he holed up inside a classroom, firing sporadically while students who were still alive lay still among the bodies of classmates. Hundreds of protesters raged outside the National Rifle Association's convention in Houston — less than 300 miles from the massacre — where the group was celebrating its longstanding partnership with Republicans to block gun control measures.

"How Many More Kids?" read one sign. "You Are Responsible," read another, painted to look as if it were splattered in blood.

And yet, even in the wake of the slaughter of so many children, Washington's leading political players are reprising their usual roles.

"There is more Republican interest and involvement today than any time since Sandy Hook," Mr. Murphy said. "So by definition, that's different, right? But I also have failed every single time. Almost without exception, these talks, when they start, don't go anywhere, right? And so I worry about claiming optimism, given that history."

As the United States entered a holiday weekend on the heels of the two mass shootings, senators headed home for recess. President Biden is set to go to Uvalde on Sunday to once again console a community in the wake of unthinkable losses.

What remains is an enormous gap between the scale of the problem — over 1,500 people have been killed in more than 270 mass shootings since 2009, according to Everytown for Gun Safety — and what America's political leaders can agree are the right responses to the carnage.

"None of this meets the moment," said Igor Volsky, the executive director of Guns Down America, a gun control advocacy group. "None of this meets the enormity of the crisis that we’re in, both in terms of mass shootings and the everyday gun violence that's been spiking. None of it. None of it is resetting the conversation."

Polling suggests that many Americans are eager for a broader reset.

Nearly 90 percent of adults in the United States support the idea of doing more to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people, according to a Pew Research Center survey last year. And about 80 percent of people say gun purchasers should be subject to background checks, even when they buy their guns in a private sale or at a gun show.

But surveys also reflect the deepening polarization in the country, where about 30 percent of adults say they own a gun.

At the federal level, 51 percent of Americans favor a nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons, while 32 percent are opposed, according to a poll this month by The Associated Press and NORC. Three-quarters of Democrats were supportive, compared with barely a quarter of Republicans.

And the divide is also wide between people who own guns and people who do not. (Republicans are roughly twice as likely to say they own a gun as Democrats.)

A sizable majority of people who do not own guns favor banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and creating a federal database to track all gun sales, according to Pew. Fewer than half of gun owners support the same restrictions. By contrast, large majorities of gun owners favor arming teachers in schools and allowing people to carry concealed weapons in more places — changes that are broadly opposed by people who do not own firearms.

The response to mass shootings in the United States is starkly different from the decisive action taken in other developed countries around the world. Britain banned semiautomatic weapons and handguns after shootings in 1987 and 1996. Australia held a mandatory gun buyback after a 1996 massacre and the rate of mass shootings plummeted. Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Norway all tightened gun laws after horrific crimes.

For Republican lawmakers in the United States, even a national tragedy like the two recent mass shootings may not be enough to break through the fear of angering their supporters, who have been fired up over the last several years by former President Donald J. Trump, Fox News and social media.

Since 2017, when Mr. Trump became president, support for banning assault weapons among gun owners, for example, has dropped to 37 percent from 48 percent, according to Pew.

The pressure that Republican elected officials feel to toe the line among their gun-supporting constituents was evident within hours of the grisly news in Texas. A steady stream of Republican lawmakers once again delivered a two-step that has worked for them for years: declaring that none of the measures Democrats favor would have stopped the gunman — even as they steadfastly oppose broader efforts that might.

Republicans have used the delayed police response to the Texas shooting as a way of shifting the debate to school security rather than guns, which have surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death for American children ages 1 to 19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a video that quickly went viral, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, focused blame on "some violent psychopath" when he was questioned by a British reporter in Uvalde.

"If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have, none of them would have stopped this," Mr. Cruz said. And in Washington, he faulted Democrats and the news media for rushing to "try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens."

That rigidity by most Republicans for the past decade has contributed to a sense of gloomy inevitability among Democrats in Congress and at the White House. In remarks the day after the Texas shooting, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he accepted "the fact" that Republicans are unwilling to prevent more killings.

Describing his hope for finding a compromise, he said: "Maybe, maybe, maybe. Unlikely. Burnt in the past."

See what the senators said when asked whether they would support a pair of gun control bills to strengthen background checks.

Mr. Murphy said he spoke to members of Mr. Biden's White House staff on Friday, who told him the president was eager to do anything he could to support the nascent negotiations over new gun safety measures.

"He can't be hands off and he won't be hands off," Mr. Murphy predicted, adding, "I think you’ll see him being actively involved over the weekend and into next week."

But the president and his aides remain wary. There is little appetite for Mr. Biden to pledge action that he knows will fail, setting himself up to look politically impotent. Aides also have cautioned that too much involvement by the president could further politicize the debate, making it harder for Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to reach consensus. And forcing moderate Democrats to take a symbolic, tough-on-guns stand could cost the party even more seats in the midterm elections this fall.

On Saturday, though, Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault weapons, a proposal that is widely supported by Democrats but is highly unlikely to pass the evenly divided Senate.

"An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society," she told reporters after attending the funeral of one of the victims of the Buffalo shooting.

White House officials say it is clear to voters and lawmakers alike that Mr. Biden supports aggressive action on gun safety measures and that Republicans do not. "This isn't a case of Republicans hiding their position," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Now, White House aides say, it is long past time for the other party to get behind those proposals.

But some activists have run out of patience with that explanation. They say Mr. Biden could — and must — be doing more.

"In your recent address to the nation over the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, you posed the question, ‘Where in God's name is our backbone?’" Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, a group that advocates on behalf of children and families, wrote in a letter to Mr. Biden on Friday. "We now pose this question back to you as the leader of this nation."

Ms. Rodrigues called on Mr. Biden to take executive actions to make guns less accessible, such as changing the way gun sellers are defined so that more of them would be required to conduct background checks. And she urged him to convince Senate Democrats to set aside the filibuster in order to ban assault weapons, raise the age limit for buying guns and vastly expand the federal background check system.

Mr. Volsky said he was deeply disappointed in what he called a lack of urgency by Mr. Biden after the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde.

"They have this learned behavior that after tragedies like this one, you say all the right things," he said of Democrats. "And when all of that fails, you throw your arms up and you blame the Republicans. It's absolutely pathetic."

Mr. Murphy is not exactly optimistic, but he is more hopeful.

He said that taking some small steps with Republicans could accelerate the decades-long effort to pass new gun safety measures by demonstrating slow but important progress, much the way gay rights and civil rights activists won minor victories before they won big ones.

Mr. Murphy said Republicans needed to see proof that they could vote for new gun restrictions and not be punished by voters. Outrage over the deaths in Buffalo and Uvalde could provide Republicans with a chance to test that theory, he said.

"The story here could be that Congress is discussing a set of measures that are much less than what is necessary to save the maximum number of lives," Mr. Murphy conceded. "But I also have another story, which is, we’ve done nothing for 30 years, and if we were to do something that was significant and that demonstrably moved the needle on our gun laws, it would be historic."

"It would," he said, "break this logjam."

Frances Robles

Two police officers in a patrol car from Levelland, nearly 400 miles north of Uvalde, are protecting the home of Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde schools police chief who was blamed for tactical errors in Tuesday's mass shooting that may have led to more casualties.

Dan Barry

HOUSTON — On one side of an avenue in downtown Houston, people filed into the National Rifle Association's annual convention this weekend to talk guns, admire guns, buy guns and invoke as holy script the Second Amendment right to bear arms; that is, guns.

On the other side of the avenue, people protested against guns, the defenders of guns, the proliferation of guns and the unholiness of American's easy access to guns that facilitated two mass murders this month; that is, the killing of 10 people, all of them Black, in a Buffalo supermarket, and the killing of 21 people, 19 of them children, at a Texas elementary school.

The avenue is called the Avenida De Las Americas.

As people on one side of the avenue sweated and shouted in the baking Texas sun, others filed into the comforting cool of the George R. Brown Convention Center. But the air-conditioned hall was not hermetically sealed. The massacre of schoolchildren earlier in the week had been in Uvalde, just 300 miles west of here. In time and distance, it was too close.

Inside, politicians spoke of "hardening" schools to a mix of N.R.A. faithful and newcomers curious about the cause. Outside, veteran and novice protesters waved handmade signs and photographs of children shot to death this week, in faint hope of changing minds.

These protesters included people like Dana Enriquez-Vontoure, an educator for more than 25 years, who stood outside the convention center with a sign she had made hours earlier. It repeated three words five times:

"Buses Not Hearses."

"It used to be that you would leave your babies with me and they would be safe," Ms. Enriquez-Vontoure, 46 and the mother of two girls, said. "Now we live in a world where we can't promise that."

She scoffed at suggestions by some gun advocates to increase school safety by arming teachers and other school officials. She said the doors at her local schools are locked during the day. To collect her daughters, she has to scan a QR code, fill out a form and wait for her child to be escorted out. No guns involved.

Just then, a criminologist and mother named Aramis Miller appeared by Ms. Enriquez-Vontoure's side. She was holding a sign of her own — "Do Not Scapegoat the Mentally Ill" — and the two of them were about to join the larger protest, which attracted many hundreds of people, across the avenue from the convention hall. They have known each other since elementary school.

But those who flashed the proper credentials could escape the heat of the furious teachers and baking sun and enter the welcoming cool of the N.R.A. convention.

Here was Michael Shao, 50, Chinese-born and now living on Long Island, who said he was promoting firearms-safety programs for Asian Americans unnerved by the spate of violent attacks against members of their community. And here were three men from Chicago, all wearing the Ukrainian colors of yellow and blue, browsing for binoculars, night-vision goggles and other items that might be useful.

"We’re just looking around," said Igor Terletsky, 50. "Seeing what is new on the market and how we can support our Ukrainian brothers and sisters."

And here, too, was a white-haired man wearing a T-shirt that said: "We the People Are Pissed."

The like-minded inside the convention mingled amicably, their gun-talk bonding interrupted only by the angry, sometimes obscene chants emanating from across the Avenida De Las Americas, and by journalists asking for their reactions.

Tim Hickey, 45, who had come from Cleveland to promote his business, PatchOps.com, which sells "morale-boosting" patches and political T-shirts, rankled at the "You hate kids!" chorus being sung at the moment. He has two children, ages 14 and 12.

"I would right now die for one of their children," Mr. Hickey, a bearded former Marine, said. "Would they do that? I don't think so."

He called the Uvalde massacre "heartbreaking," and said that many gun owners grieve in a slightly different way than others "because we wish we were there to stop it ourselves."

Mr. Hickey defended the gun laws in place, repeated a common refrain that "you cannot legislate evil" and saw no connection between the Uvalde shooting and the N.R.A., including this convention.

"That's the media," he said. "That's what you do."

Standing beside him was Kat Munoz, 34, from Novi, Mich., who described herself as a survivor of domestic violence and a social media "influencer" for female self-defense. Her therapy dog, a Belgian Malinois named Millie, sat at her feet.

Ms. Munoz is a mother of two, ages 11 and 9. She too expressed deep sadness over Uvalde. She also defended the country's gun laws and the N.R.A. She said as far as she knew, none of those responsible for mass shooting deaths were N.R.A. members. And, she said, "Gun laws don't change psychopaths from being psychopaths."

She went off to find a place for Millie to relieve herself, with intentions to stay far from the protesters gathered across the street. Later, while in line to hear former President Donald J. Trump address the convention, Ms. Munoz texted that "recent events" had made her wonder whether "we could compromise with raising the age to buy a firearm or stricter background checks on AR-15s," the style of weapon used by the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, and the 18-year-old accused gunman in Buffalo.

"If that's what it takes to not get rid of our rights altogether, I would not oppose that if absolutely necessary," she wrote.

The shooting massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde — which join Pittsburgh, Charleston, Parkland, Sandy Hook and other locations too many to name here — had other effects on the N.R.A.'s celebration of itself this year.

In the cavernous hall outside the convention center's exhibit area, an electronic sign continued to promote a Saturday night musical event called "NRA's Grand Ole Night of Freedom," featuring Lee Greenwood, billed as "America's most recognized patriot"; Don McLean, of "American Pie" fame; and Larry Gatlin, the country and gospel singer. Tickets: $25.

But all three dropped out late last week. Mr. McLean told Fox News that performing would be "disrespectful." Mr. Gatlin told CNN that it "would have been kind of a classy move" for the N.R.A. to cancel the convention and instead have a moment of prayer or silence.

There was another noticeable absence at one end of the hall, where, according to the N.R.A.'s map of exhibitors, a large space had been reserved for the Georgia firearms company Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of a gun purchased by the man who killed 19 schoolchildren in Uvalde. Instead, the space was occupied by a few tables and a popcorn machine.

But the many exhibitors who did show up did their best to provide a blissful, if temporary, separation from the realities waiting just outside the doors. There was something for everyone, from the dedicated hunter to the anxious survivalist to those seeking outfits that could fashionably conceal a handgun.

Here were knives and handguns and rifles, artfully displayed and available to be held. At one firearm manufacturer's booth, a salesman urged a reporter to pick up a short-barrel rifle with a side-folding stock. "Touch it! Feel it!" he said seductively. "It won't bite."

Here were hand-held devices to pick up your spent cartridges, sleek vaults to store your guns and promotions for gator hunts. A booth for the N.R.A. cigar club. A booth for a wireless provider promoting Christian conservatism. A long line for some "Silencer Smooth," or whatever else was brewing at the Black Rifle Coffee Company.

As Friday wore on, N.R.A. members began to leave the convention center's protective bubble. They knew that the exhibit hall would open early Saturday morning, offering the latest in Kalashnikovs and Rugers and Glocks, and that on Sunday, the convention's last day, many would gather in the grand ballroom for a breakfast with prayer on the menu.

In the Friday evening heat, some conventioneers lingered on their side of the avenue, smoking cigarettes, watching the protests with disdain, occasionally taking selfies with the angry crowd as a backdrop. Several said they believed these demonstrators had their rights, too.

Others ventured across the two lanes of road, not to engage with the shouted accusations that spared no one, including older veterans, but to collect their cars or make their way to their hotels. They passed placards saying "Enough Is Enough," and "Guns Are the Death of U.S." and "Am I Next?" — this one held by a girl barely taller than the crowd-controlling barrier gates, over which were draped children's clothing stained blood red.

Some of the N.R.A. members, carrying bags of convention swag, smiled and waved as they passed. Others, though, kept their eyes trained on the hot pavement.

David Yaffe-Bellany and Jessica Silver-Greenberg

After one of its military-style rifles was used in the Texas elementary school shooting on Tuesday, the gun manufacturer Daniel Defense published a pop-up statement on its home page sending "thoughts and prayers" to the community of Uvalde, Texas, and pledging to cooperate with the authorities.

When the pop-up disappeared, a different message took center stage: a promotion, adorned with gold-encased bullets, for a sweepstakes to win $15,000 worth of guns or ammunition.

The Texas shooting, which left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead and more than a dozen wounded, has put a national spotlight on Daniel Defense, a family-owned business in Georgia that has emerged as a trailblazer in an aggressive, boundary-pushing style of weapons marketing and sales.

Some of its advertisements invoke popular video games like "Call of Duty" and feature "Star Wars" characters and Santa Claus, messages that are likely to appeal to teenagers. The company was an early adopter of a direct-to-consumer business model that aimed to make buying military gear as simple as ordering from Amazon, enticing customers with "adventure now, pay later" installment plans that make expensive weaponry more affordable.

And the company's founder and chief executive, Marty Daniel, has fashioned himself as a provocateur who ridicules gun control proposals and uses publicity stunts to drum up sales.

Daniel Defense is at the forefront of an industry that has grown increasingly aggressive in recent years as it tries to expand beyond its aging, mostly white customer base and resists the calls for stronger regulation that seem to intensify after every mass shooting.

"Daniel Defense is basically the poster child of this egregious, aggressive marketing," said Ryan Busse, a former executive at the gun company Kimber who is now an industry critic. "Marty Daniel burst in the door, a lot louder and more brazen than other gun makers, much like Donald Trump did on the political scene."

He added, "Through this company, you are telling the story of how the gun industry has become increasingly radicalized."

Daniel Defense's strategy seems to have been effective. Its sales have soared, in part because of its successful targeting of young customers like Salvador Ramos, the gunman in Texas. Mr. Ramos, whom the authorities killed on Tuesday, was a "Call of Duty" video game enthusiast and appears to have bought his assault rifle directly from Daniel Defense, less than a week after turning 18.

Mr. Daniel did not respond to emails or calls. Steve Reed, a Daniel Defense spokesman, said in a statement that the company was "deeply saddened" by the Texas shooting.

Mr. Daniel, 59, is a practiced storyteller who adopts a folksy tone to market his company and its guns. He often casts himself as something of a goofball, a screw-up who flunked out of Georgia Southern University — not once, but twice — before finally graduating and starting a company that made garage doors.

He has said that his gun company was born out of his poor golf game. Instead of puttering around the course, Mr. Daniel started using an AR-15 — the type of gun he would later go on to make — for target practice. "Every shot he fired filled him with a satisfaction he’d never before experienced," the company's website says.

At the time, Mr. Daniel had trouble finding a way to mount a scope onto his rifle. He began designing and selling his own accessory that allowed gun owners to add lights, a range finder and lasers onto the rifle.

He got his break in 2002 at a gun show in Orlando, Fla., where he was approached by a representative of the U.S. Special Forces. He ultimately won a $20 million contract to produce the accessories for combat rifles. More deals followed. In 2008, he won a contract with the British military, according to Daniel Defense's website.

By 2009, the company had expanded to making guns for consumers. Its military ties were the basis of its marketing, which often featured heavily armed fighters. "Use what they use," one ad says. Another shows a military-style scope aimed at passing cars on what looks like a regular city street. Others include references — using hashtags and catchphrases — to the "Call of Duty" video game.

Before the 2000s, most gun makers did not market military-style assault weapons to civilians. At the largest industry trade shows, tactical military gear and guns were cordoned off, away from the general public. That started to change around 2004, industry experts say, with the expiration of the federal assault weapon ban.

"Companies like Daniel Defense glorify violence and war in their marketing to consumers," said Nick Suplina, a senior vice president at Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that supports gun control.

In 2012, the Sandy Hook shooting led to an industrywide surge in gun sales, as firearm enthusiasts stocked up, fearing a government crackdown. In an interview with Forbes, Mr. Daniel said the shooting "drove a lot of sales." (Forbes reported that Daniel Defense had sales of $73 million in 2016.)

After the shooting, Daniel Defense offered employees extra overtime to meet skyrocketing demand, according to Christopher Powell, who worked for the company at the time. "They kept people focused on the task at hand," he said.

But in the late 2010s, some colleagues started to worry that Mr. Daniel had become distracted by the glamour of marketing the brand and rubbing shoulders with celebrities and politicians, according to a former Daniel Defense manager. They voiced concerns that some of the marketing materials were inappropriate for a company that manufactures deadly weapons, said the manager and a former executive, who didn't want their names used because they feared legal or professional repercussions.

Some ads featured children carrying and firing guns. In another, posted on Instagram two days after Christmas last year, a man dressed as Santa Claus and wearing a military helmet is smoking a cigar and holding a Daniel Defense rifle. "After a long weekend, Santa is enjoying MK18 Monday," the caption states, referring to the gun's model.

The industry's aggressive marketing has landed some companies in trouble. Earlier this year, the gun maker Remington reached a $73 million settlement with families of children killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Conn. The families had claimed that Remington improperly marketed its assault rifles, including with its weapons appearing in "Call of Duty," which the killer at Sandy Hook had frequently played.

A year after Sandy Hook, with the Super Bowl approaching, Daniel Defense deployed a new marketing stunt.

The National Football League had a policy prohibiting ads for weapons on its telecasts. But Daniel Defense tried to buy a 60-second spot that depicted a soldier returning home to his family, with ominous music in the background. "I am responsible for their protection," the ad's narrator intones. "And no one has the right to tell me how to defend them."

Given the N.F.L.'s ban on gun ads, it was no surprise that the ad was rejected. (Daniel Defense claimed that the ad complied with the policy because the company sells products besides guns.) But Mr. Daniel turned the rejection into a rallying cry, and the conservative media lapped it up. Appearing on Fox News's "Fox & Friends," he urged viewers to "call the N.F.L. and say, ‘C’mon, man, run my ad.’"

"That is Marty Daniel at work," Mr. Powell said. "He's not one of those typical C.E.O.s that you see."

Mr. Daniel and his wife, Cindy, have worked hand-in-hand with the National Rifle Association to raise money for the group, sell weapons to its members and beat back calls for gun control.

In recent years, Mr. Daniel and Ms. Daniel, the company's chief operating officer, became outspoken supporters of Donald J. Trump, contributing $300,000 to a group aligned with Mr. Trump. Mr. Daniel joined the "Second Amendment Coalition," a group of gun industry heavyweights who advised Mr. Trump on gun policy.

Mr. Daniel told Breitbart News in 2017 that Mr. Trump's election saved "our Second Amendment rights." He and his wife have also donated to other Republican candidates and groups, including in their home state of Georgia. So far in the 2022 election cycle, they’ve given more than $70,000 to Republicans.

Before the Uvalde massacre, Daniel Defense's guns were used in at least one other mass shooting. Four of its semiautomatic rifles were found in the hotel room of the gunman who killed 59 people at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, one of the deadliest shootings in American history.

Mr. Daniel has been an especially vocal critic of gun control. After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, he briefly expressed support for legislation, backed by the N.R.A., to bolster the federal background-check system. But he soon reversed his position, citing "overwhelming feedback." He declared that "all firearms laws that limit the rights of law-abiding citizens are unconstitutional."

"You don't see the same kind of boldness from the chief executives of Smith & Wesson or the old-guard gun companies," said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the nonprofit Violence Policy Center. "Daniel is more at the edges."

Daniel Defense is only a fraction of the size of those rivals. It manufactured nearly 53,000 guns in 2020, the most recent year for which government data is available, giving it a less than 1 percent share of the market.

But experts say it has led the way in building a direct-to-consumer sales business, as gun manufacturers try to match the success of other industries in capitalizing on e-commerce.

In the past, gun companies would sell their products to stores, which then sold the weapons to customers. Now, industry experts say, the manufacturers are increasingly trying to sell guns and accessories online, targeting consumers with slick ad campaigns. (Guns sold online have to be picked up at a licensed firearms dealer, who conducts a background check.)

Daniel Defense also offers a buy-now-pay-later financing option that allows qualified buyers to spread the price — some of its guns retail for more than $1,800 — over a number of payments. The approval takes seconds, the company's website says.

"They’ve been a brand leader," said Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State who studies the gun industry. "They’ve been exceptionally successful at selling the idea that civilians who’d like to own a firearm for self-protection need a high-capacity, semiautomatic weapon."

Gun sales surged during the pandemic, including at Daniel Defense. The company also received help via a $3.1 million loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which was intended for small businesses at risk of laying off employees.

The week before the Texas shooting, Daniel Defense posted a photograph on Facebook and Twitter, showing a little boy sitting cross-legged, an assault rifle balanced across his lap. "Train up a child in the way he should go," the caption reads, echoing a biblical proverb. "When he is old, he will not depart from it."

The ad was posted on May 16. It was Mr. Ramos's 18th birthday.

A day later, he bought his first gun, a Smith & Wesson assault-style rifle, from a store in Uvalde, according to State Senator Roland Gutierrez of Texas who cited law enforcement officials. The store has been identified as Oasis Outback. Three days later, he bought the Daniel Defense rifle for $1,870 plus tax, according to a photo of the receipt that Mr. Ramos reportedly posted on the social media platform Yubo.

Amid a national outcry after the shooting, Daniel Defense retreated from its usual provocative online presence. The company restricted access to its Twitter feed. It canceled plans to have a booth at this weekend's N.R.A. convention in Houston.

And on Thursday, it removed the $15,000 guns-and-ammo sweepstakes from its home page.

Tara Siegel Bernard and Serge F. Kovaleski contributed reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the school in Florida where a mass shooting occurred in 2018. It is Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, not Parkland High School.

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