Residents of Uvalde, Texas on May 28, 2022 pray and mourn for the victims of the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in the small town. Photo: Xinhua

Grieving families were to hold the first funerals Tuesday for Texas shooting victims one week after a school massacre left 19 children and two teachers dead, with President Joe Biden vowing to push for stricter US gun regulation.

Mourners attended wakes in the town of Uvalde on Monday for some of the child victims gunned down by a local 18-year-old man who was then killed by police.

At one funeral home - just across the street from Robb Elementary School where the shooting occurred - friends, family and strangers attended a closed-casket visitation for 10-year-old victim Amerie Jo Garza. Pictures of the young girl decorated the space.

Esther Rubio, who described the scene as "very somber," came from nearby San Antonio with her husband.

Remembrances for another slain student, Maite Rodriguez, began just hours later. 

In Washington, Biden - who visited the small town about an hour's drive from the Mexico border earlier in the weekend - responded to desperate calls for weapons reform.

"I've been pretty motivated all along" to act on guns, Biden told reporters Monday.

"I'm going to continue to push," he said, adding, "I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it."

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers worked through the Memorial Day weekend to pursue possible areas of compromise. 

They reportedly were focusing on laws to raise the age for gun purchases or to allow police to remove guns from people deemed at risk - but not on an outright ban on high-powered rifles like the weapon used Tuesday in Uvalde or the one used 10 days earlier in Buffalo, New York.

Uvalde's first funerals are set for Tuesday, with others scheduled through mid-June. The huge number of victims, many with horrific wounds, has left the town's two funeral homes turning to embalmers and morticians from across Texas for help.

One anonymous donor has pledged $175,000 to help cover funeral costs, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.

The Uvalde massacre - the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six staff were killed in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 - came less than two weeks after 10 people died in the attack at a Buffalo grocery store by a young gunman targeting African Americans.

While mass shootings draw anguished attention and spur momentary demands for change, most US gun violence passes with scant notice.

The country's Memorial Day weekend - Monday is a national holiday - has been marked by yet more graphic violence. 

At least 132 gun deaths and 329 injuries were recorded nationwide from Saturday to Monday evening, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.

AFP