We're pausing our live coverage for now. If you're just joining us, or want a recap, here's the latest updates on the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas where 19 children and two teachers were killed on Tuesday.

• Reports are emerging that onlookers, frustrated at the police's lack of action, urged officers to charge into Robb Elementary School where the shooting took place on Tuesday. Witnesses told the Associated Press that bystanders shouted at police to go in, but they didn't
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the gunman, Salvador Ramos, posted on social media just minutes before the attack took place saying he would shoot his grandmother and shoot up a school. Meta, Facebook's parent company, later said they were private messages
• Former classmates of the shooter have described him as an "odd" and "antisocial" person

• The shooting has reignited a nation-wide political debate on gun controls
• US President Joe Biden said he will travel to Texas in the coming days, and said it's "time for action"
• His comments came after Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke was ejected from a briefing by Texas Governor Greg Abbott after confronting him for his stance on gun laws

John Sudworth
BBC News

Newtown, Connecticut, is a place that reminds you that the threat of gun violence is everywhere in America.

Set in forested hills, with the treeline punctuated by white church steeples, a road runs from the centre of town past the pleasant New England homes and across a stream to reach, in a few short minutes, the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

It was here, 10 years ago this December, that a 20-year-old resident shot and killed 26 children and staff members before turning the gun on himself.

Today, Newtown's flag is at half mast, a gesture of empathy from one place so deeply scarred by an inexplicable act of brutality to another.

Nicole Hockley is a founding member of the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation and I meet her, sitting outside the office on a picnic table in the warm spring sunshine, to talk about the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas almost 2000 miles away.

Her six-year-old son, Dylan, was one of those murdered at Sandy Hook.

"All shootings reopen wounds that - every time I think are perhaps somewhat healed - are torn open again," she tells me.

"But because it is so hauntingly similar to what happened at Sandy Hook School it hit closer to home in a way that I hadn't expected, and I went into a state of shock."

A law enforcement source has confirmed that the shooter was not wearing body armour when he entered the school on his rampage.

Early reports suggested the gunman had been wearing some kind of bulletproof vest.

But the source told CBS News, the BBC's US partner, that he was wearing a "chest rig" which is a carrier to hold magazines, similar to what military and law enforcement tactical teams wear.

That appears to have been the source of confusion over whether he was armoured or not.

Reports are emerging that onlookers, frustrated at the police's lack of action, urged officers to charge into Robb Elementary School where the shooting took place on Tuesday.

Juan Carranza, who watched the scene from outside his house, told the Associated Press, external that women standing nearby shouted "Go in there! Go in there!" at police officers soon after the attack began. But they didn't go in, he said.

Another witness, Javier Cazares - whose daughter was killed in the attack - said he had raised the idea of charging into the school with other bystanders.

"Let's just rush in because the cops aren't doing anything like they are supposed to," he said. "More could have been done."

"They were unprepared," he added.

Reality Check

Image source, Getty Images

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a gun advocacy group which has significant influence in US politics - officially spending about $3m per year to influence gun policy, external, with considerable additional sums spent indirectly.

Each election cycle the NRA awards letter grades (between A and F) to each US politician running for office.

The grades are based on a politician’s gun advocacy record, including how outspoken they’ve been on gun rights and how they’ve voted on gun laws in the past.

Over the last decade, these ratings have become increasingly split down party lines.

In 2020, 94% of Republicans running for office were given an A grade by the NRA (the highest pro-gun category). In that same year, 92% of Democrats had the lowest F grade.

This has significantly changed over time. In 2010, more than a quarter of Democrats running for office were given an A grade. By 2020, there was only one remaining Democrat in this group.

The full list of NRA grades for the 2022 US midterms is yet to be published, but the ideological divide shows little sign of narrowing.

Read more about the NRA and why it's so powerful.

CNN reports that minutes before the attack began, the gunman texted a girl who lives in Frankfurt, Germany, about his plans.

Screenshots of messages reviewed by the cable network apparently show the suspect complaining to the girl about his grandmother being "on the phone with [mobile phone carrier] AT&T about my phone."

"It's annoying," he texted.

CNN reports, external that six minutes later he texted the girl back: "I just shot my grandma in her head."

Seconds later, he added: "Ima go shoot up a elementary school rn [right now]."

The last message was sent at 11:21 in Texas - 11 minutes before the school shooting began.

The girl told CNN she used to speak to the 18-year-old daily on FaceTime, and they also communicated via a livestreaming app called Yubo and on a gaming app named Plato.

Law enforcement sources have told the BBC's US partner, CBS News, that preliminary information suggests the gunman shot his grandmother in the face after arguing with her about a mobile phone bill.

Angelica Casas and Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Uvalde

Image source, Getty Images

Ivan Arellano, 18, was set to graduate from Uvalde High School later this month.

One day before the shooting, he and his fellow graduates donned their caps and gowns and walked through the hallways of Robb Elementary to a chorus of cheers from the students.

"That was the first hall we walked in," he tells the BBC, describing the location where 19 students were later gunned down by his former classmate.

Arellano said he's gone to Uvalde High with the gunman since the eighth grade, but that recently, the teen simply stopped coming to school.

Arellano remembered the gunman as an "odd" and "antisocial" person, who lacked friends and would often use "fear and intimidation" to try to scare his classmates. He also pushed back on media reports that the gunman was bullied.

"He would choose to bully people, and it just wouldn't work so he would just get angry," he said.

"He would just try to scare people and I guess this was his last way to scare people."

In a town this small, Arellano said everyone here knows someone who's been personally touched by this unfathomable tragedy.

Looking back, he said he feels like the warning signs were there.

"A lot of people who knew him, we knew he wasn't mentally healthy," he said.

"And a lot of people could agree that we probably should've said something."

Barbara Plett Usher
BBC News, Uvalde

Mary Hernandez grew up near the school, and still comes back every day to check up on her mother.

On Tuesday she was shocked to find police had taken over the neighbourhood, and horrified when she heard the number of children killed.

“It’s devastating because this is a small community and everybody is touched because 19 families are mourning and you’ll know some of these people,” she said.

Mary knew one of the teachers who died, Irma Garcia. They were both Catholic and had worked together organising retreats for parishioners.

“I couldn’t believe it! She was a beautiful person, a beautiful soul - very caring: you could tell that she was a good teacher.”

Mary supports stricter gun laws, although she tells me she feels she’s in a minority. Mental health is also a problem, something the Texas governor stressed in his press conference today.

But, Mary says, “that’s a problem everywhere in the world. Why is it only in the US that we have mass shootings? Because guns are available.”

“It’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be soon,” she says when I ask how the community can recover.

“There are good people here, but we are now among the other massacres that have occurred in the United States.”

With some of the victims “very very young,” she says, “it touches everybody and it hurts everybody.”

Nomia Iqbal
BBC News, Uvalde

Image source, EPA

A US flag hangs from the ceiling next to the lone star flag of Texas in this arena.

This is where rodeos usually take place but tonight it’s turned into a prayer vigil so people can grieve their profound loss.

A stage is set for music and prayers which looks out to a few hundred people on the bleachers - they are sombre with some shedding tears.

Many are wearing shirts that simply say "Uvalde". Community leaders stand on the stage and start the event with a hymn that people join in.

Their opening words were “we love you.” Republican leadership is here - Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz - who refuse to talk to the press when we approach them.

Here, there is no mention of the familiar issue that is always sparked by horrific US shootings - gun control.

Instead the vigil is focused on something else familiar in times like this - offering thoughts and prayers.

Image source, Reuters

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has sent a message of solidarity to the US in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.

Speaking to journalists in his daily news briefing, López Obrador said that he wished to "express my condolences, my pain, and my solidarity with the families of the young people that lost their lives yesterday. I’m sending them a strong hug".

"In our country, lamentably, this happens. It hurts us a lot that these disasters happen. We want to send a hug to the family members of the young people, the victims, and also our solidarity with the government of the United States," he added. "These are very sad, very difficult moments. For us, it’s the same."

In a statement, the Mexican government said that consular officials in the town of Eagle Pass - about 60 miles from Uvalde - were working with local officials to determine whether any of the dead or wounded were Mexican nationals.

The foreign ministry said it would release the number of any Mexican citizens involved once the information was confirmed by US authorities.

A Texas student has been arrested after being found with an "AK-47 style pistol" and a "replica AR-15 style" rifle, police say.

The arrest took place outside a high school in Richardson, over 350 miles (560 km) north of Uvalde.

Police say a witness called 911 to report a person carrying a rifle outside Berkner High School.

Police responded and located the gunman, a student. The firearms were found in his car and he was charged with unlawful carrying of weapons in a weapons-free school zone.

No other information was released due to the suspect's age.

It comes a day after the murder spree in Uvalde.

Image source, Getty Images

The mother of the teenager who killed 21 people at a Uvalde primary school has spoken about her son.

"My son wasn't a violent person. I'm surprised by what he did," Adriana Reyes told the Daily Mail from the hospital where her own mother is being treated for a gunshot wound to her face (the suspect shot his grandmother before attacking the school, local authorities say).

Reyes denied reports that she had a toxic relationship with her son. "I had a good relationship with him. He kept to himself; he didn't have many friends," she told the newspaper.

Reyes, 39, also told NBC News: "I’m very upset about everything. A lot of stuff has happened, but right now I don’t feel good."

Juan Alvarez, Reyes' boyfriend, told NBC the attacker was "a weird one".

"I never got along with him. I never socialised with him. He doesn’t talk to nobody,” said Alvarez, 62.

“When you try to talk to him he’d just sit there and walk away.”

Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic challenger to Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, interrupted a news conference hosted by Abbott on Wednesday.

O'Rourke was escorted out of the building after heckling his political rival, and blaming him for the Uvalde shooting.

He was seen speaking to reporters in English and Spanish afterwards about why he staged the interruption.

O'Rourke and other Democrats have said the state's lax gun laws led to Tuesday's massacre.

During the interruption, O'Rourke could be heard referring to a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas.

He wrote on social media on Tuesday that Texas officials like Abbott should have taken action on gun control at the time, but did nothing.

Angelica Casas and Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Uvalde

Today, unlike most days, Mickey Craddock had to drive past caution tape and a police barricade to get out of her home.

Craddock, a local nurse practitioner who's served the Uvalde community for the last decade, lives three doors down from the home where the teenage gunman stayed with his grandmother.

She said she didn't know the family well, but remembers a quiet teenage boy who occasionally played basketball down the street.

"He was a regular teenage kid," she said, "he was a troubled kid, and I could probably point out five or six of them in this community.

"People from bad backgrounds, drug backgrounds, you know, but we never thought anything like this would happen."

Despite the media circus, Craddock's neighbourhood is quiet today. Chickens and roosters roam freely through front yards decorated with high school graduation photos for a ceremony that has since been cancelled.

Craddock said when she initially heard reports of shots fired at the school she thought "stupid kids were shooting guns in the air" to celebrate the end of the school year.

It wasn't until later she found out one of her colleagues at the clinic lost a child in the shooting that killed at least 19 children less than a mile away.

"I took care of half of those kids from the time they were babies," she said, her voice breaking.

The killer, she says, "had the tools that took out a whole bunch of children".

Sarah Smith
North America Editor

The state senator for the district that covers Uvalde, Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat, was visibly upset and very angry as he told me that something has to be done about access to semi-automatic weapons in America.

He said he couldn’t imagine what people in other countries must think of the US when they see tragic incidents like this happening, and he seemed to be struggling to understand why it is that an 18-year-old is allowed to buy, legally, a semi-automatic weapon that can cause this type of carnage.

He also said he does understand people’s commitment to the Second Amendment - their right to bear arms - and recognises that this is a rural hunting community and his constituents are very wedded to their weapons.

He just doesn’t understand why military-style rifles are allowed on the streets legally in America and hopes this incident may change that. But he didn’t seem optimistic that political change was coming.

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Uvalde

Hope Robinson, 24, lives an hour away from Uvalde and came by to pay her respects.

She is from a conservative family and says that “guns can be a force of good in the right hands”.

“My husband is very pro-guns and I did say to him 'did this shake him?'. And he said 'a little'.

"But for me it’s about guns being in the right hands. I don’t think anyone should be able to just get hold of them and there should be informational training, courses beforehand.”

Like driving a car, I suggest. "Yes, not anyone can just drive a car, but in my opinion if you make guns harder to get for everyone, bad people can still get them.

"I think it’s all about your intent. My husband’s family used a gun when an intruder broke in to their house with a gun for example.”

The right for Americans to bear arms as outlined in the Second Amendment is something she truly believes is important.

“I do think teachers should be armed with guns to protect classes," she added.

Pratiksha Ghildial
Reporting from Uvalde

Image source, EPA

The drive to the town of Uvalde is lined with farmland and ranches.

As you enter the town, US and Texas flags fly at half mast. A sign says “Pray for Uvalde”.

It’s a very small community where everybody seems to know everybody. Just outside the Robb Elementary School, streets are lined with huge media trucks - all here to try to tell the story of the horror that unfolded inside this tiny school campus.

People have been laying flowers as tributes.

Texan police officers in khaki-grey uniforms and trademark hats are zealously guarding the school premises. But there is very little they can do heal the deep wounds that will be felt for generations to come.

Image source, Getty Images

A statement has been released by the National Rifle Association (NRA) - the influential pro-gun lobbying group that resists new gun control measures.

The four-sentence statement begins with "deepest sympathies" to the families and victims of "this horrific and evil crime".

"Although an investigation is under way and facts are still emerging, we recognise this was the act of a lone, deranged criminal," the statement continues.

Officials in Texas have not yet said whether the gunman had any prior criminal history.

The NRA adds that at their annual conference, taking place this weekend in Houston, members "will reflect on these events, pray for the victims… and pledge to redouble our commitment to making schools secure".

In President Biden's remarks on Tuesday night, he called out pro-gun groups, asking Americans: "When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?"

If you're just joining our coverage, here's what's happened so far on Wednesday:

• At a briefing in the last hour, President Joe Biden said he and the first lady would travel to Uvalde in the coming days; Vice-President Kamala Harris again called for the US to pass reasonable gun laws
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott told reporters the 18-year-old gunman had written in a social media post that he would shoot his grandmother and attack a school
• Meta, Facebook's parent company, later clarified that the messages were not sent publicly on the platform
• Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke was ejected from the governor's press conference after blaming Abbott for the massacre because of the Republican's opposition to gun control
• US authorities have provided more details of Tuesday's fatal school shooting at Robb Elementary school. They say the gunman locked the children in a classroom and murdered them
• The names of some of the 19 seven- to 10-year-olds who were killed are being released. Their teachers, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, also died