NEW ORLEANS — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott backpedaled Friday on his previous praise of law enforcement in the Uvalde Shooting.
Texas law enforcement admitted to a series of mistakes that delayed officers from stopping the gunman barricaded inside a classroom for nearly an hour.
“I was misled. I am livid about what happened,” Abbott said. “I was on this very stage two days ago, and I was telling the public information that had been told to me in a room just a few yards behind where we are located right now."
A few miles away the memorial for the 19 people and two teachers who died in Uvalde is growing. Hand-in-hand with the heartache is the nationwide debate over gun control.
“I've got to be clear here, it is unacceptable for Congress or for the administration to not act,” Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves said. “But the reason this hasn't been done is because it's not easy.”
Graves told Eyewitness News he doesn't believe an assault weapons ban would have stopped the shooter.
"He might not have been able to buy them from that store. However, it would not have prevented AR-15s that were previously manufactured from being available,” he said.
Both he and Senator John Kennedy said they agree new laws need to be considered, but they’re are divided on background checks.
"We don't need more gun control in America, we need more idiot control,” Kennedy said.
Graves says background checks obviously don't go far enough, but Kennedy sidestepped when asked if he'd support universal background checks.
"I am not going to take away somebody's constitutional right on a whim, based on the hysteria that we keep seeing coming out of the Democratic party,” Kennedy said.
Meanwhile, Senator Bill Cassidy told Vice News Thursday where he stands on AR-15s.
"Well, if you talk to the people that own it, killing feral pigs or whatever in the middle of Louisiana, they wonder why would you take it away from them?" Cassidy said when asked why someone would need that weapon.
Kennedy, Cassidy, Graves and Congressman Steve Scalise have all been endorsed by the NRA Political Victory Fund and received thousands in campaign dollars from the organization.
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