end could have a significant downward pressure on gun violence in this country and break the logjam. maybe that is the most important thing we can do, is to show that progress is possible and if the sky doesn t fall for republicans, if they support some of these common sense measures. joining us now is congressman allred of texas, a former voting rights and civil rights attorney. thank you very much for joining us tonight. and i want you to take on what joe biden heard in uvalde, when people were pleading with him as he was leaving, do something, just this simple two-word request that they were yelling to their president. how would you answer that? we have to. and they re right. they re right. they should be frustrated. they should be upset. the time to stop the next school shooting is right now. because we should act now. and we know what we need to do. and i m so glad to have senator
all of this is essential to any investigation being conducted in uvalde. sam brock, thank you very much. appreciate that report. and joining us now is julian castro, an msnbc political analyst. what did you learn in uvalde? good to with you, lawrence. well, i mean what i learned is it was a tremendous amount of anger, of this quiet growing anger and impatience, the phrase i heard most often from the residents and the extended family members that i spoke to, was something has to change. i also heard, and sam sort of alluded to this in what he described in the conversations with people involved, people seem to want an all of the above approach to ending these types of situations.
they recognize that there are problems with our gun laws. i also heard a lot of folks say, why in the world did an 18-year-old have access to this type of weapon, and they agreed that schools should be as secure as possible. they also think that mental health is an issue, in some instances and truth be told, uvalde which is only a city of 20,000 people, heavily mexican american, has been underserved in terms of social services and mental health care services, for generations. so all of those things come into play. when you ask folks, just plainly, look, what do you think should be done if you want change? when you consider that peter arredondo has been duly elected to the city council, that he postponed tomorrow s meeting where he was going to be sworn in, there comes a question at what point does a public official resign a position because of lost confidence? whether he thinks he did a good job at the school or not,
president to do something. he responded by saying i will. joining us now is msnbc s sam brock in uvalde. sam, that city council meeting for tomorrow has been canceled. that was the next time that people in uvalde had a right to expect to learn more about what happened in that school. what next? reporter: that s just it. so basically, lawrence, good evening, good to be with you, since last tuesday, that s the last time we heard from the city and from chief arradondo, silence since then, dps, the state s department of public safety, did speak on friday, to go through some of the sort of back and forth time line that we ve seen over the course of the last five or six days and that s where we ve finally
gotten any sort of public update as well. with respect to arradondo, we did get a press release from the mayor of uvalde, and he later sat down with a local affiliate to discuss what he says to the fact that arredondo was dually elected to the city council. and he sees nothing from the election code or anything else that would prohibit from taking the oath of office. to your knowledge, we are currently not aware of any investigation of mr. arredondo but we do know the d.o.j. is conducting an independent review. according to the committee on guns, there is no black or white response to that. we did speak with family members of victims, they told me pretty much across the board, they don t believe that an 18-year-old should have access to an assault style rifle. this isn t a commentary on taking weapons away. they don t think it is