NewsTracker Answers for week of May 30, 2022

Q: An 18-year-old high school student was identified last week as the shooter who barged into an elementary school in the small south Texas town of Uvalde where he killed two teachers and 19 students ages 9 to 11. Officers shot and killed the teen more than hour after the attack began. Where is Texas?

Circle the area on this map


Q: The school attack came just 10 days after another 18-year-old was arrested in the slaying of 10 people at a supermarket in which state?

A. California

B. Florida

C. Nevada

D. New York


D. The teen charged in the Buffalo, NY, shooting was a racist determined to kill as many Black people as he could, according to authorities. Both the shooter and victims in Uvalde had Hispanic ancestry. But three years ago, Latinos were the target of a mass shooting in an El Paso Walmart, which killed 23 people. Suspects in both Buffalo and El Paso wrote of a far-right conspiracy theory about replacing white people.


Q: In Texas and New York, an 18-year-old is legally allowed to buy an AR-15 assault-style rifle, like the ones used in the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings. What else are 18-year-olds allowed to do in those states?

A. Buy alcoholic beverages

B. Buy tobacco products

C. Vote in elections

D. All of the above


C. New York and Texas don’t allow anyone under 21 to buy alcoholic beverages. Federal law prohibits anyone under 21 to buy tobacco or nicotine products. A constitutional amendment guarantees the right to vote for citizens 18 and older. In Uvalde, the teen legally purchased two AR-15 rifles just after his 18th birthday – and less than a week before the school shooting.


Q: Just three days after the Uvalde mass shooting, the National Rifle Association (NRA) opened its annual convention in Texas’ most populous city ...

A. Dallas

B. Houston

C. Laredo

D. San Antonio


B. Former President Donald Trump Friday told the influential gun lobbying group meeting in Houston that guns were not the problem in mass shootings. Instead, he blamed families, schools, social media and mental health for the gun violence that has been experienced by more than 311,000 U.S. students since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, according to the Washington Post.


Q: Which state has experienced the deadliest mass shooting by an individual?

A. California

B. Florida

C. Nevada

D. Texas


C. A 64-year-old man firing more than a 1,000 bullets from a hotel window killed 60 people and wounded 411 others on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada in 2017. California, Florida and Texas have each had mass shootings that killed more than 20 people, and they also have the highest numbers of gun deaths. Suicide is the top cause of U.S. gun deaths, but the number of firearm homicides has risen sharply in recent years.