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“How much more bloodshed will it take?” Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from Texas, wrote in a tweet featuring Ogles’s photo. “It’s. The. Guns.”

Fred Guttenberg, who advocates for gun control after his 14-year-daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Parkland school shooting in 2018, said the tragedy “is listening to Tennessee politicians who refuse to call it a shooting but who engaged in behaviour that caused this to be more likely when they glorify guns”.

Ogles, a freshman congressman, represents Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, which includes the school where a 28-year-old armed with two rifles and a handgun killed at least three children and three adults on Monday (Tuesday AEDT). The shooter had been a student, authorities said. The shooter was also dead after being “engaged” by police.

Ogles’s office had no immediate response to the criticism.