At least 20 people have been killed after a shooter opened fire at a busy Walmart store packed with families shopping for the new school year in the Texas border city of El Paso, sending panicked shoppers fleeing.

Texas governor Greg Abbott said 20 people had been killed, and more than two dozen more were injured. Mexico’s President Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were among the dead and six were among the wounded.

Abbott said it was “one of the deadliest days in Texas history.”

A 21 year-old white male from Allen, a suburb of Dallas more than 600 miles away, was taken into custody after surrendering to officers. El Paso police chief Greg Allen said a “manifesto” was being investigated in connection with the suspect, and the shooting was being investigated as a potential hate crime.

“Right now we have a manifesto from this individual, that indicates to some degree, it has a nexus to potential hate crime,” Allen said at an evening press conference on Saturday evening, adding that he would not name the suspect. Allen said the suspect had driven the nine-hour journey to El Paso.

El Paso is located in western Texas, right on the border with Mexico. The diverse city has around 680,000 residents, and its population is 80% Latino. Its Mexican twin city Ciudad Juárez, sits directly across the large barrier that divides their downtown areas. More than 23,000 pedestrians cross from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso to work every day.

Police started receiving reports of a shooting at 10.39 am local time on Saturday, police said. Soon after, the police department tweeted that officers were responding to an active shooting scene and that people were advised to stay away from the area around Cielo Vista Mall, located south of El Paso international airport.

The Walmart store, which is part of the mall complex, was busy with families shopping for the new school year. El Paso police spokesperson Robert Gomez estimated there were up to 3000 customers and 100 staff in the store.

Initial reports suggested that the weapon used was a rifle, Gomez said.

Jazmin Salas and her mother, Miranda Salas, who had been doing back-to-school shopping together described having to hide together inside a nearby store, before being escorted outside by law enforcement.

“It was very triggering,” Jazmin Salas told KTSM news. The teenager said she felt like she could not trust anyone. “There are crazy people everywhere.”

Cell phone footage broadcast by KTSM showed a man lying flat on the ground, with the sound of at least 10 gunshots in the background.

A Walmart employee described hearing gunshots and trying to get as many people as she could out of the store, and seeing customers and employees tumbling over each other in their rush to escape. One of her co-workers was shot in the hand, the employee said.

Another woman interviewed described seeing at least two or three bodies lying on the ground.

A man who had been at a store in the mall nearby told KTSM that he had heard gunshots and taken out his own gun as he ran towards the parking lot. He said police had briefly questioned him, thinking he was the shooter.

The shooting in El Paso comes less than a week after a shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, left three people dead and fifteen injured.

Law enforcement authorities said a 19-year-old who had previously lived in town cut his way through a fence to get inside the festival, then opened fire with a military-style rifle. Two Walmart employees were killed in a shooting at a Walmart in Mississippi last week.

Everyday, 100 people are killed with firearms in the US, and hundreds more injured, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/03/el-paso-shooting-texas-walmart

Would you also support a gun ban for people who have a history of violence/domestic violence?

If so, we're making progress! If only Congress could do the same.

(my end game would be to ban all guns, besides hunting rifles, as those actually have a purpose. but with that, require a hunting license and registration to own said gun)(but I'm not asking you to agree to that)

Good news! There was another mass shooting in Dayton, OH this morning/last night.

More good news! He only was able to shoot for about 1 minute!

More gooder news! He killed 9~ people and injured 26~ more in that 1 minute.

The truth is, the first strikes with a gun already cause irreparable lethal damage before any good guys step in. And no one can tell whether the guy with a gun is good or bad until after he uses the gun.

Nothing will be passed, of course. Well, the House will pass a reform bill, but it won't be taken up in the Senate.

Seriously though... Along with keeping the Supreme Court from becoming strictly conservative for several decades, Gun Control is something that can be easily done, relatively, if Democrats simply come together at the polls next year. These are two very simple, yet very important, reasons most (all) Dems can unite behind, but the likelihood of the party uniting is pretty slim at the moment. The party is just in a transition of sorts, it seems, and at a terrible point in time.

The gunman behind the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, killed his sister and eight other people in an attack that lasted less than 30 seconds, police say.

Betts (gunman) wore body armour and came carrying extra ammunition for his .223-calibre assault rifle with high-capacity magazines.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49229054

In the days after the 2012 Newtown school shooting, Congress attempted to enact universal background checks on all gun purchases, including private transactions. Despite bipartisan support in the US Senate, a minority blocked the proposal through parliamentary procedure. The legislation was never even considered by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

The dynamic, in at least one chamber of Congress, is different today.

When Democrats took over the House in January of this year, it didn't take them long for them to approve similar legislation to the Newtown bill - marking the first time in a quarter century that the lower chamber of Congress has passed sweeping new firearm regulations.

After the dual shootings in El Paso and Dayton, the pressure is now on the Republican-controlled Senate to take up the measure - something Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far declined to do.

He might be able to withstand the pressure. And even if it comes to a vote, the parliamentary obstacles allowing just 41 Republicans to block passage remain. But several of the senators who backed the bipartisan bill in 2013 are still in office. And with actual legislation from the House on the table, the Senate is the final obstacle keeping a bill from reaching the president's desk, not the first.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49229654

That seems reasonable. Hold a gun to the head of the American people for a shitty agreement that was already in place...