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A network of educational leaders who have experienced gun violence is ready to help those affected by the Texas shooting, the former principal of Columbine High School has said.

Frank DeAngelis was head of Columbine, Colorado in 1992 when two gunmen killed 13 people on campus.

“There are about 29 of us that have actually been involved in shootings within our community,” he said.

“So, we reach out and we have guides just to help them wherever we can. And it’s not a one-time phone call,” DeAngelis said of the group, the Principal Recovery Network.

“I will be there every step of the way to help them just as people helped me in our community.”

False claims about identity of the teenager who killed 21 people at a school in Texas distract from the real issue of gun control, a disinformation expert has said.

Jaime Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, was responding to unfounded claims that the killer was an immigrant living in the US illegally, or transgender.

The claims reflect broader problems with racism and intolerance toward transgender people, and are an effort to blame the shooting on minority groups who already endure higher rates of online harassment and hate crimes, Longoria said.

“It’s a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue (of gun violence), and it gives people who don’t want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame,” Longoria added.

Facebook has rejected a claim by Greg Abbott that the Texas school shooter posted publicly on the platform before he opened fire on a classroom, killing 21 people.

At a press conference on Wednesday the Texas governor said the  gunman posted on Facebook approximately 30 minutes before reaching the school.”

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said shortly after those comments that the messages described by the governor were “private one-to-one text messages that were discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred.”

“We are closely cooperating with law enforcement in their ongoing investigation,” he added.

Washington governor Jay Inslee was quick to react to this week’s carnage at a Texas elementary school, sending a tweet listing the gun control measures the Democratic-controlled state has taken. He finished with: “Your turn Congress.”

But gun control measures are likely going nowhere in Congress, and they also have become increasingly scarce in most states. Aside from several Democratic-controlled states, the majority have taken no action on gun control in recent years or have moved aggressively to expand gun rights.

That’s because they are either controlled politically by Republicans who oppose gun restrictions or are politically divided, leading to stalemate.

“Here I am in a position where I can do something, I can introduce legislation, and yet to know that it almost certainly is not going to go anywhere is a feeling of helplessness,” said state senator Greg Leding, a Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arkansas Legislature. He has pushed unsuccessfully for red flag laws that would allow authorities to remove firearms from those determined to be a danger to themselves or others.

After Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead, Democratic governors and lawmakers across the country issued impassioned pleas for Congress and their own legislatures to pass gun restrictions. Republicans have mostly called for more efforts to address mental health and to shore up protections at schools, such as adding security guards.

Among them is Texas governor Greg Abbott, who has repeatedly talked about mental health struggles among young people and said tougher gun laws in places like New York and California are ineffective. In Tennessee, GOP representative Jeremy Faison tweeted that the state needs to have security officers “in all of our schools,” but stopped short of promising to introduce legislation during next year’s legislative session: “Evil exists and we must protect the innocent from it,” Faison said.

Salvador Ramos sent Facebook messages he was “going to shoot an elementary school” 15 minutes before his deadly attack, it has emerged.

A15-year-old girl from Germany has told The New York Times that Ramos had text messaged her just before the shooting, saying “Ima go shoot up a elementary school rn.”

Graeme Massie has the full story:

Police who responded to the Texas school massacre have been accused of being “unprepared” and failing to respond quickly enough to the mass school shooting.

Officers had to be urged to enter the building where the gunman’s rampage killed 21 people, witnesses to the atrocity have said.

My colleague Matt Mathers has more details:

The Texas school shooter who gunned down 19 children and two teachers messaged a woman online just hours earlier saying: “I got a lil secret I wanna tell you.”

Salvador Ramos, 18, appeared to hint at his plans to attack at Robb Elementary in Uvalde in an alleged private Instagram chat with the woman, telling her “I’m about to.”

Read more on this story here:

The shooter’s gunman has broken her silence following the school attack that killed 19 students and two teachers and says that her son “wasn’t a violent person”, Graeme Massie reports.

Full story here:

Tributes and memorials are being paid to the 21 victims of the shooting. See here:

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the school shooting on Tuesday.

Here are the victims: