The shooting at a Texas high school has revived the perennial hot-button issue of arms control in the United States, and the ease with which weapons can be purchased.

In order to shoot 10 people dead and wound 10 others, teenager Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fire Friday as the school day began in the town of Santa Fe with a shotgun and revolver legally purchased by his father.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, focused on the need to better address mental health issues and to arm school personnel, rather than calling for limits on the proliferation of legal weapons.

This vast and conservative southern state has among the most permissive firearm laws in the United States, a country where a third of children live in a household with at least one firearm.

Any buyer as young as 18 can buy a firearm in Texas without a special permit, including for semi-automatic, rapid-fire weapons with large-capacity magazines.

- Pulling the trigger -

Paradoxically, buyers must be 21 in order to purchase a handgun. A permit is required to carry this type of weapon, and more than a million Texans have the document.

Federally accredited weapons dealers rely on a cursory search for any red flags in a potential buyer's documented mental medical history or potential criminal record. The process itself can easily be avoided through online purchases or at traveling fairs.

It's also legal to openly carry a shotgun or rifle, except where it is expressly forbidden.

Texas played host to the National Rifle Association's annual convention earlier this month.

At the event President Donald Trump proclaimed his support for the powerful gun rights lobby that provided major financial support to his 2016 presidential campaign.

During primaries in March, arms control legislation was not a major topic in either the Democratic or the Republican camp.

Some Republican candidates make their support for gun rights a major plank of their campaign. In a 2015 video, Texan Senator Ted Cruz cooked bacon wrapped around the barrel of his assault rifle by firing the weapon.

- Children as 'collateral damage' -

But the state's gun culture has a price. Since January 2009, Texas has seen at least 20 shootings with four or more people killed -- gunman not included -- according to the group Everytown for Gun Safety. That's a national record.

Six months ago, a man opened fire at a church near San Antonio, killed 25 people, including a pregnant woman.

"Our children have become collateral damage in a nation that allows its gun laws to be written by gun lobbyists," said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Studies show that two thirds of children know exactly where their parents hide their weapons, even when adults are convinced otherwise.

In more than 40 percent of households with weapons and children, at least one weapon has no engaged safety mechanism or is located in an unlocked space, according to a 2000 study by the American Journal of Public Health.

Some 1.69 million children under the age of 18 live in a hone with at least one loaded and freely accessible weapon, the American Academy of Pediatrics found in a 2005 study.

The relentless cycle of school shootings in the United States
Santa Fe, United States (AFP) May 18, 2018 - The United States is the only developed country in the world that suffers from a relentless cycle of school shootings, such as the rampage that took yet more lives at a Texas high school on Friday.

Ten people were killed and another 10 injured when a student armed with a shotgun and a revolver opened fire just as classes were starting at the school in Santa Fe.

There is roughly one school shooting a week in the United States, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that is pushing to limit the proliferation of firearms in the country.

US schools have become less and less a safe havens for children, as the country grapples with an epidemic of gun violence that claims around 33,000 lives each year, and many Americans appear fatalistic.

Unless there is a high body count, most school shootings don't even make the national press.

According to a database compiled by the Washington Post, more than 214,000 primary and secondary school students have experienced a school shooting in the United States since 1999.

At least 139 students, teachers and others have been killed over the same period.

The familiar television images of students fleeing for their lives across playing fields, or tearfully recounting their near-death experiences, prompt the inevitable same questions: Should all schools have security gates? Should teachers be armed?

Just three months ago, in February, a young man armed with a semi-automatic, assault-style weapons killed 17 people at his old high school in Florida.

That particular rampage, in a school whose surviving students spoke out movingly and articulately against gun violence, prompted a fresh movement to demand legislation that would impose stricter controls on firearms.

That led to a wave of marches across the country and overseas on March 24 that brought as many as two million people on to the streets to demand action.

The hundreds of thousands of school kids were portrayed as the "school shooting generation" or the "Columbine generation," named for the school where two students in Colorado gunned down 12 of their schoolmates and a teacher in 1999.

Yet there has been no progress towards legislation that would dent the rampant gun violence, aside from a few minor measures introduced in a handful of states. President Donald Trump himself has proposed arming teachers.

- Disturbing trends -

The actual definition of what constitutes a school shooting varies, hence the difference in the reported numbers of such incidents.

But the simple fact remains that there are far more of them in the United States than in the rest of the developed world, and the long-term trends are disturbing.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation carried out a study of "active shooters" between 2000 and 2013 and found that the numbers of mass shootings are on the rise nationwide.

In 70 percent of cases, the killings and injuries occur within five minutes or less, giving law enforcement a very short time to react.

And 24.4 percent of all gun rampages take place in schools or other educational establishments.

Shooters who open fire in schools or colleges are, for the most part, students or former students, as was the case in Santa Fe on Friday.

And the FBI also notes that school shootings are becoming deadlier.

Some of the more prominent attacks have had a lasting impact on the national psyche, such as Columbine in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 or the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, when 20 kids aged between six and seven were shot dead by a gunman.

Since that slaughter, emergency "active shooter" drills have been stepped up in schools to prepare students to react when a gunman attacks their classroom.

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