Ovidia Molina's voice keeps breaking when she talks about the killing spree in Uvalde.

"Every time," she says, "every time -- and I hate to put it like that -- it happens, it's a reminder that schools aren't safe." throat shut.

Two days before the summer holidays, a gunman shot dead 19 primary school children and two teachers in Uvalde.

It happens all the time, says Molina, but you never get used to it.

She herself worked as a teacher for eleven years.

Her worst fears came true when she heard on Tuesday that an 18-year-old man had killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

"It's a trauma that students and teachers have to carry with them throughout their lives," she says.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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It was only a few hours after the shooting—many families weren't even certain of their children's fate—before Texas Attorney General Republican Ken Paxton publicly called for teachers to be armed.

"You have to do more in schools," Paxton said, "we need more people who are trained to respond."

More guns in response to gun violence?

An old debate has been rekindled.

Texas Republicans are unanimous in their stance.

Senator Ted Cruz doesn't want stricter gun laws either, but rather more armed people on school grounds.

This is the "most effective measure" to protect children, he said after the recent killing spree.

Proven that weaponry doesn't stop rampages

Molina thinks that's wrong: "We protect the children, but we don't kill them." In the end, the perpetrator is, as is often the case, a former student - and then you should shoot him?

Besides, how fast such attacks happened!

Chaos reigns everywhere!

Molina says, "In the end, it would just be more bullets flying through the air."

In fact, evidence has shown that the mere presence of gunmen is not enough to stop those who run amok.

A Washington Post investigation of more than 200 school massacres between 1999 and 2018 found that 40 percent of the affected facilities had a police officer on site.

In only two of the cases investigated did officials manage to stop the attacker.

The most common weapon used by attackers on such rampages is a semi-automatic rifle designed to fire off as many shots as possible in the shortest possible time.

Typically, attacks last only a few minutes, so a teacher, even if armed, would have to be in the right place at exactly the right time to make any real difference.

"It can't all be dumped on the shoulders of teachers," says Molina.

If she has her way, it should be harder to buy semi-automatic guns and there should be more focus on the mental health of students.

"We're tired of hearing, 'Your thoughts are with us.'

We want something to change.

We want students and teachers to be safe.

We don't want to think about it anymore

Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles also stood protectively in front of their students in Uvalde on Tuesday.

They are the two teachers who were killed by the attacker.

They shared a classroom at Robb Elementary School.

Garcia, who lived to be 48, had spent her entire career at the school, 23 years in total.

"I'm already looking forward to the new school year," says her short CV on the website.

Garcia's four children, aged 13, 15, 19 and 23, were orphaned as of this week.

Her husband Joe died of a heart attack on Thursday, two days after the massacre, a family member revealed.