HOUSTON, US

The US Justice Department released its long-awaited review Thursday of a deadly 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 students and two teachers. 

The agency’s scathing conclusion to the handling of the massacre by law enforcement and school officials was straightforward: "Cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training that contributed to those failures and breakdowns."

A gunman entered Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, with an assault rifle and went on a shooting rampage that killed 21 victims and injured at least 17 others.

With nearly 400 law enforcement officers on the scene, it took 77 minutes before any of them entered the classrooms and killed the shooter. But by that time, it was too late and Justice Department officials offered that as the biggest mistake.

"The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using resources and equipment that were sufficient to push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms ... and the threat was eliminated," said the report.

"No community should ever have to go through what the Uvalde community suffered," US President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Biden reiterated the importance of the Justice Department's review to create better response practices that "ensure a swifter and more effective response to future active shooter incidents."​​​​​​​

"Today’s report makes clear several things: that there was a failure to establish a clear command and control structure, that law enforcement should have quickly deemed this incident an active shooter situation and responded accordingly, and that clearer and more detailed plans in the school district were required to prepare for the possibility that this could occur," he said.

In the wake of the shooting, the Biden administration signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that provided stricter gun safety regulations, including extended background checks for gun purchases for those under the age of 21. The Uvalde gunman was 18 years old.

The president urged Congress on Thursday to pass common sense gun safety laws such as universal background checks and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines to prevent mass shootings like Uvalde from happening in the first place.

"The families of Uvalde – and all American communities – deserve nothing less," said Biden. "The longer we wait to take action, the more communities like Uvalde will continue to suffer due to this epidemic of gun violence.