Scots tennis ace Andy Murray has reacted with fury after 19 children and two teachers were killed in a US school massacre.
The 35-year-old, who is a survivor of the Dunblane massacre, took to social media after the gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
A shooter, identified by US law enforcement agencies as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was killed by responding police officers.
He had reportedly posted images of semi-automatic rifles on the social media platform Instagram before carrying out the attack.
Murray branded the incident "f****** madness" in a response to a tweet from TalkTV presenter Piers Morgan, who delivered a plea to his 7.9 million followers for action on US gun laws.
Morgan had written on Twitter: "14 schoolchildren and a teacher at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas have been shot dead by an 18-year-old gunman. Absolutely horrendous.
"I don’t know what else to say about these endless US gun massacres - it’s for Americans to resolve but where is the will?"
Murray responded: "F****** madness", accompanied by an angry emoji.
The tennis champion was nine years old and a pupil at Dunblane Primary when youth club leader Thomas Hamilton walked into the school with four legally-owned handguns on March 13 1996.
Hamilton - who had been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards young boys - killed 16 children and a teacher, and injured 15 others before turning the gun on himself.
It remains the deadliest mass shooting incident in the UK and led to an immediate and drastic overhaul of British gun laws that saw most private handgun ownership banned.
Murray has not spoken at length about his memory of the massacre - but has revealed in the past he knew Hamilton as a child.
He opened up about the incident in 2019 for an Amazon Prime documentary Andy Murray: Resurfacing, that followed his recovery from a serious hip injury.
But the tennis star could not speak about the incident face-to-face, instead leaving a voice note for director Olivia Cappuccini.
He said: "You asked me a while ago why tennis was important to me. Obviously I had the thing that happened at Dunblane. When I was around nine.
"I am sure for all the kids there it would be difficult for different reasons.
"The fact we knew the guy, we went to his kids club, he had been in our car, we had driven and dropped him off at train stations and things.
"Within 12 months of that happening, our parents got divorced.
"My feeling towards tennis is that it’s an escape for me in some ways. Because all of these things are stuff that I have bottled up.
"I don’t know because we don’t talk about these things. They are not things that are discussed."
The Robb Elementary shooting came just days after another massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that was reportedly racially motivated.
Alleged perpetrator Payton Gendron, 18, is in police custody. US media reported that he disseminated a racist manifesto across message boards prior to committing the mass slaying, which he streamed via the gaming platform Twitch.
Both incidents have sparked renewed calls for tighter gun controls across the US, which infamously enshrines citizens' "right to bear arms" in its written constitution.
The school shooting has also been compared to the Sandy Hook and Parkland tragedies in 2012 and 2018, which saw a combined 43 people shot dead.
The Associated Press reports that US President Joe Biden has called for new restrictions on firearms - but faces opposition from pro-gun representatives in the country's two legislatures.
In an emotional address to the nation from the White House on Tuesday, Mr Biden pleaded for action to curb gun violence after years of failure - and blamed firearms manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington.
He said: "When in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?
"These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world - why?
"The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong.
"I'd hoped when I became president I would not have to do this, again."
Biden, who has lost two of his children - son Beau, who died of a brain tumour, and daughter Naomi, who died in a car crash at the age of one - made an emotive appeal to pro-gun legislators.
He added: "To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away.
"There's a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you're being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out.
"It's time we turned this pain into action."
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