On May 24, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States. Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old former student of the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 18 others. Ramos was killed 77 minutes after entering the classroom by law enforcement officers.

It is the third deadliest shooting at an American school after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 and the deadliest school shooting in Texas. After shooting and wounding his grandmother at their home, Ramos drove to Robb Elementary School, where he entered a classroom and shot his victims, having bypassed local and state officers who had been in the hallways. He remained in the classrooms for 1 hour and 14 minutes before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit breached the classroom and fatally shot him. Police officers did not breach the classroom, but cordoned off the school grounds, resulting in violent conflicts between police and civilians, including parents, who were attempting to enter the school to rescue children. As a consequence, law enforcement officials in Uvalde were criticized for their response, and their conduct was reviewed in separate investigations by the Texas Ranger Division and United States Department of Justice.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials laid much of the responsibility for the police response on Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department (UCISD PD) Chief Pedro Arredondo, whom they identified as the incident commander. Arredondo disputed the characterization of his role as incident commander, but was fired by the Uvalde school board. A report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee attributed the fault more widely to "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" by many authorities. It said, "At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety... there was an unacceptably long period of time before officers breached the classroom, neutralized the attacker, and began rescue efforts."

Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials gave inaccurate reports of the timeline of events and exaggerated police actions. The Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged it was an error for law enforcement to delay an assault on Ramos' position in the student-filled classrooms, attributing this to the school district police chief's assessment of the situation as one with a "barricaded subject", instead of an "active shooter". Law enforcement was aware there were injured individuals in the school before they made their entrance. In June 2024, two officers, including Arredondo, were criminally indicted for allegedly mishandling the response to the shooting. On January 21, 2026, former Uvalde school officer Adrian Gonzalez was acquitted of 29 child endangerment charges. The trial of former Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo on 10 counts of "abandoning or endangering a child" has yet to be scheduled.

Discussions ensued about American gun culture and violence, gridlock in politics, and law enforcement's failure to intervene during the attack. A month after the shooting, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and President Joe Biden signed it into law; it was the most significant federal gun reform legislation since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Investigations revealed that Ramos was motivated to do the attack for fame. After the shooting, Robb Elementary was permanently closed. The district plans to demolish it and build a replacement.

Uvalde is a Hispanic-majority city of about 15,000 people in the South Texas region; it is located about 60 miles (97 km) east of the United States–Mexico border and about 85 miles (137 km) west of San Antonio. In 2022, about 90% of Robb Elementary School's 600 students in the second through fourth grades were Hispanic, and about 81% of the student population came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. On the day of the shooting, there had been an awards ceremony at the school.

Ahead of the shooting, Ramos had purchased 1,657 total rounds of ammunition, which included 375 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammunition purchased on May 18, 2022. A total of 315 rounds were found inside the school, consisting of 142 spent cartridges and 173 live rounds. Additionally, a total of 922 rounds were found on school property outside the building, consisting of 22 spent cartridges and 900 live rounds. Overall, Ramos fired 164 rounds during the shooting. Police and Border Patrol officers fired a combined total of 35 rounds during the shooting: eight in the hallway and 27 in the classroom where Ramos was killed.

The city of Uvalde spent 40% of its municipal budget on its police department in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, and UCISD, the school district operating Robb Elementary School, had multiple security measures in place at the time of the shooting. The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department (UCISD PD) had a six-officer police department responsible for security at the district's eight schools. It had also more than doubled its expenditures on security measures in the four years preceding the shooting, and in 2021, it expanded its police force from four officers to six officers. The state of Texas had given UCISD a $69,141 grant to improve security measures as part of a $100 million statewide allocation made after the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, in which ten people were killed. The district also had a security staff that patrolled door entrances and parking lots at secondary school campuses. Since 2020, Pedro "Pete" Arredondo had served as UCISD's police chief.