they did heroic things yesterday and they are always very humble that they are truly humble heros. yesterday we lost two teachers these two teamers i would say are the cornerstone of that campus to some great degree. they are two beautiful souls, they taught for years, ne have kids in our district and they poured their heart and soul into educating our kids. 19 precious students who came to school yesterday to enjoy the day, to enjoy the awards assembly. and as i look at their pictures, you can just tell by their and angelic smile that they loved coming to school and there precious individuals. this is a difficult time for everybody. we are hurting. we have been cut deep here in our community. it will move forward. it going to take some time moving forward. our faith has been shaken. we ask you to continue to pray for these families, these kids and our community and our teachers. i am a product of uvalde. i worked for this district for 30 years. please pray for our teachers, pray for our community and we will move forward. thank you, governor. >> thank you. we'll take some questions. >> [ inaudible ]. >> the reality is i don't know the answer to that question. however, what i do know in talking to the leaders here, as well as leaders in other locations around the state and that is the one thing that has substantially changed is the status of mental health in our communities. what i do know is this, and that is we as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health. anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge period. we as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it. >> reporter: were kids caught up in the gun fire or were all kids shot by the gunman? >> we're in the process of processing that. it's a detailed process so i can't answer that. but for right now we believe all the children were shot and killed by ramos. [ inaudible ]. >> we did see some. >> we did have concerns. someone in california didn't report it. we're in the process to make sure she's interviewed and find out more about it. there may be other clues that we're not aware of. we're going to scour anything to make sure this doesn't happen given in the community. there's usually something out there. right now it's the report on the timeline. we find out something else, we'll provide that information. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i'll answer in part. we also have the commissioner who may be able to shed additional light. here is the information that we know. you pointed out sb-11, which you know but others may not. people need to understand i signed 17 laws to address school safety. and one of them dealt with threat assessment and preparation for threat assessment. and there are certain standards that schools are required to comply with to make sure that they are addressing threat assessments. i have no information as we speak at this particular time about the status of this particular elementary school. however, to make sure your broader question is answered sufficiently, the person coming up is the commissioner for the texas education agency. >> so there's significant appropriations provided to ensure that the local school systems around the state have resources for one of the component, senate bill 11 was a school safety allotment, additional up-front funding for that. we provide training to assure the threat assessment protocol, including threat response plans and multi-hazard plans are practiced on a recurring basis. there have been fairly significant efforts to bolster those managerial practices in these detective or preventive practices in schools all over the state of texas. we will continue to do more. after any incident like this of course you reflect on lessons learned to ensure that we can prevent this kind of situation in schools going forward. >> if i can just add to that -- >> i'll call on you next. >> if i can just add to that briefly the house and senate worked together to put $100 million in trying to give the schools all the tools that they needed to try and protect the students. the marshals program, the guardian program to arm teachers where schools want it. we left a lot of those programs optional, up to the parents and school boards and school districts and they're doing the best they can. and you're always going to have, again, no matter what you do, there's going to be someone to find another area that's vulnerable. but the legislature did act, the governor signed those bills but we can and need to do more in the area of mental health where we've also been working on that as well. but need to do more. we've got to in our smaller schools where we can get down to one entrance, one entrance might be one of those solutions. if he had taken three more minutes to find an open door, police were there pretty quickly, but this school district has been doing a really good job in trying to protect their students and those teachers died yesterday protecting their students and this is continued work for us. >> reporter: if you were at an official fun raiser in the county, why did you not cancel event? >> first, with regard to yesterday, i was actually in taylor county responding to a different disaster, the disaster of fires that had ripped through taylor county and destroyed 20 homes. that is when i learned about the shooting that was taking place pretty much at that time here. on the way back to austin i stopped and let people know that i could not stay, i could not go, and wanted to let them know what happened and get back to austin to continue my collaboration with texas law enforcement to make sure all the needs were being met here in the uvalde area. as far as future concerns, i'm living moment to moment right now. my heart, my head and my body are in uvalde right now and i'm here to help the people who are hurting. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i can't. it's going to within 40 minutes or an hour, but i don't want to give you a particular timeline. law enforcement was there, they did engage immediately, they did contain him in the classroom and put the tactical staff together in a very orderly way and breached and assaulted the individual. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> the initial engagement? it was just -- yeah, confronted him and he seen the report of the particular accident and he followed him right in when wrounds -- rounds were exchanged. and we had had two uvalde officers also were responsible for containing that area. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i knew it wasn't the community but obviously the uvalde area because they got there so quickly and i'll let them answer that question. but they were there in force and they were there, importantly, had members of their tactical team there and they took the lead on that. but i'll refer to -- i have a border patrol uniformed -- >> first off, the u.s. border patrol del rio sector has a state in uvalde. we have about 150 agents or so assigned permanently in uvalde and we have several agents that choose to live in this community. we had folks at training, folks in the field and some 80 or more responded. as to where that particular individual came from, i don't have that yet. the investigation will bear it out but we have a large presence here in uvalde. i'm not going to release his name just yet. >> [ inaudible ]. >> we begin talking about it there. i'll tell you one thing that we talked about, which is something we've heard in some other regions of texas also and that is in approximately maybe as much as a 40-county region around the area where we gather right now, there is no mental health hospital and there is a shortage of beds for mental health in this region. if someone is suicidal, has a mental health problem, they often times would have to go to someplace like san antonio. with the growing population in this region, with the profound mental health challenges that were discussed with us, one takeaway i had was there is greater need for a physical mental health care facility in this region. but we know that buildings don't treat people. people treat people. so there needs to be more personnel, more strategies, a greater understanding by that mental health care provider community about what the needs are and they will be best equipped to know the best way to provide or let's say meet those needs. the bottom line is this and i think it's a fair statement, that legislative leaders understand about health challenges in the mr settings in the state of texas and we have a commitment to help address those challenges. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> it's one of those issues that was wide live discussed in the last several sessions, and in particular in the 2019 session. and pretty much every issue was raised by one legislator or another about fongs ways to address -- potential ways to address shootings like this. and those 17 buildings that i did sign, they hardened schools, made schools safer and addressed mental health. issues like that is correct the solutions were agreed upon by legislators at that time. and it's what i perceive legislators will continue to focus on. we consider that what we did in 2019 to be one. most profound legislative sessions not just in texas but we've seen in any state in addressing school shootings. that said, to be clear, we all understand our work is not done, our work must continue. and we will continue to discuss with legislators about all the potential avenues and pathways that we can take to make sure that schools will be even safer going forward. >> i know the people like to try to oversimplify this. let's talk about some real facts. there are, quote, real gun laws in chicago. there are, quote, real gun laws in new york. there are real gun laws in california. i hate to say this but there are more people who were shot every weekend in chicago than there are in schools in texas. and we need to realize that people who think maybe just implement tougher gun laws is going to solve it. chicago, l.a. and new york disprove that thesis. so if you're looking for a real solution, chicago teaches that -- our job is to come up with real solutions that we can implement. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. so the last thing first. all together we altogether we addressed more than half a million dollars to address school safety. with the laws we passed in 2019, which is three years ago, all those measures that you were talking about were included in those laws. let me give you several examples. an entire platform that was addressed was what's called school hardening or hardening schools. some of those strategies reduced the number of entrances. other strategies provide things like school marshals or having dps officers or others face off paperwork in schools so there will be a law enforcement presence in schools. they involve different type of strategies that would make it -- should make it more difficult for a shooter to get into a school. i can tell you what we all agree upon. we're going to go back and look at exactly what was passed, any shortcoming in what was passed, any shortcoming in implementation. i want you to know also that included in those laws were requirements by school districts across texas to work with the school safety commission to make sure that all the strategies would be used and employed and tested, including active shooter strategies for schools to be ready to be prepared to employ as needed. and so, yes, from pretty much every angle it was debated. let me go back in time. this is something where i began working up the governor's plan to respond to this a year in advance. and an entire to looking for that, to debating for that and get prepared for that, which meant that everyone was going to be focusing on it and they did. so my point in saying that is that this took the time, effort and mental involvement of all legislators during the course of that session to put what they consider to be the best solutions on the table, meaning they're more adopted, some were not. we adopted what we consider to be the best plans of that session. again, we will always and especially in this coming session evaluate what more needs to be done in our schools to make them even safer. >> we understand that. now we're looking at surveillance video so we can go frame by frame and track that every minute. that's part of the investigation. and i'll wait until we complete that part and provide that information. right now i don't want to say. i think we have an answer but we haven't confirmed it yet. [ inaudible ]. >> no, not chased. not at all. >> all the victims have been identified. all the notifications have been made. >> yes, there's an ongoing recovery team. we have our company of texas rangers and we have the evidence response team and atf is helping as well. >> can we get you to speak up a little bit. >> we don't see a motive or catalyst right now. we're scouring and will continue to do so. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> they were public, like anything else. they were out there. he was trying to communicate. of course some of the information we're going to have to continue to do interviews with people he was in contact with so we're not even close to being done yet. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> i can't comment on that right now. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> very interestingly in the meeting we had before coming out here, i raised that exact issue. because we talked about mental health. and, to me, someone who is as dimented as it takes to kill little kids, it goes beyond seems to me a mental health issue. listen, i'm not a doctor. i can't classify these things. i don't know the extent to which mental health would be able to address someone who has the challenges that they would shoot their grandmother and then shoot and kill all these babies, all these young kids. kind of what was pointed out at the time in our discussion earlier is there could have been a time earlier in his life when it was a more typical mental health issue that could have been addressed. i don't have any information about that. maybe others don't either. is there a difference between a mental health challenge that could be addressed and evil? i don't know. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> well, it obviously is a meaningful characterization and the point is this, if you know someone more evil, i want to see what they did but i consider this person to have been pure evil. go ahead. say it again. well, the answer to that was given to this gentleman back here earlier and that is it's something we did talk specifically in our meeting before coming out here and that is, for one, not just this community but the surrounding geographic area is lacking in a mental health hospital or other physical facility. there literally are either no beds or inadequate beds to address those with mental health challenges when you look at a population base and a growing population base, it will be an issue we take in what ways we address mental health issues, does it include a physical mental health facility, if so, how large would it be. so there are many issues for us to consider and i val wait and to work on addressing. >> i'd like to add to that. in the last special session we appropriated about $115 million to partner with campuses across the state of texas, higher education, to have a mental health professional on campus. this is mainly a covid issue, mental health coming out of covid but it's mental health across the board for any child who wants to meet with a professional. it's a challenge to have those professionals in your community. we appropriated half a billion to make sure communities out in texas have high-speed internet so where they can have a consultation online with a mental health protection. in texas we pass you can -- they were april dressed late in october this past year and many of those programs are being rolled out right now. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> we have other ways of addressing it. >> reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> so i'm not exactly clear on your question but i think i have the gist of it well enough to be able to answer it in this way, and that is we will all consider the best strategies for schools to employ but, importantly, we do that in conjunction in working with schools. we won't be imposing policies on schools without working with them. we need isds and schools and school leaders and school safety professionals at the table for that discussion purposes if we are going to achieve the best standards that are possible. thank you all. governor greg abbott and company there addressing the shooting in uvalde, texas. there was a lot that happened in that news conference, a lot of detail, how exactly the shooter operated, what exactly he did that day. there was a moment where beto o'rourke stood up and said this isn't right and things need to change. he was shouted out by the governor and those on stage, and we'll get into what he said in a moment. one thing the governor said a moment ago, he was asked whether 18-year-olds should be able to buy a gun. this 18-year-old shooter just turned 18 a few days ago and got two guns and a lot of bullets. he said in texas 18-year-olds have been able to buy guns, long guns specifically for 60 years and he doesn't know what's changed now to make shootings more prevalent in texas. i'm katy tur. it is not a good day to be with you. it could not be a good day when we live in a country that shrugs its shoulders are children are being murdered. 19 kids shot to death with an assault rifle, an a.r.-15 style weapon according to law enforcement, a weapon designed for war. so deadly the inventor of the ar-15 who was an avid hunter never even used it, and his family says he would be sickened by how it is being used to kill civilians. and here we are again with our kids dead, 19 kids and two of their adult teachers killed in their classrooms just after recess, two days before summer break. so far eight have been identified. you see them here. fourth grader eliana cruz torres, third grader annabelle guadalupe, fourth grader javier lopez was 10 years old. he was bubbly. he loved to dance with his brothers and his mom. fourth grader ann marie joe garza was 9. she called 911 to try to save herself and her friends. she called 911. hours earlier she got an award for making honor roll. jose flores jr. made honor hole that morning. he was so smart and he loved to last and play basketball. and lucia lucia said he was the sweetest little boy he'd ever known and he added it's not just because he was his grandson. >> irma garcia had been a teacher for years and eva mireles. she loved the outdoors and loved to hike. her cousin said she bursted with life. >> she was absolutely vivacious. she was definitely an adventurer. it breaks my heart. i just saw her for christmas this last december and she was just -- her cooking was amazing, her laughter was contagious and she's going to be missed. she did love what she did at the school and she put her heart into everything that she did. >> there have been some reports that she was trying to protect the students at the moment that she lost her own life, which i'm sure does not surprise you. does that sound like the woman you know? >> 100%. she is a hero. >> now she is dead, her life stolen. there was a good guy with a gun at the school and officials say law enforcement tried to stop the shooter, but they were no match for the shooter's fire power. according to two law enforcement ours, it took a specialized off-duty customs and border patrol agent, a member of the unit known as bortak to eliminate the threat. bortak's training rivals that of special forces and that is what it took to eliminate the threat, a special forces trained officer who was also shot, although not fatally and not before the threat killed 19 kids and two teachers. joining me is kerry sanders and jose diaz-balart and chuck todd. thank you. kerrey, we