Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

A teenage stu­dent opened fire at the Abun­dant Life Chris­t­ian School in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin on Mon­day, killing a teacher and an­oth­er teenage stu­dent in the fi­nal week be­fore Christ­mas break. The shoot­er al­so died, po­lice said.

The Wis­con­sin school shoot­er was a 17-year-old fe­male stu­dent, a law en­force­ment of­fi­cial told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The of­fi­cial was not au­tho­rized to dis­cuss the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and spoke to the AP on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Sev­er­al near­by pub­lic schools in Madi­son and the sub­urb of Monona tem­porar­i­ly im­ple­ment­ed ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures af­ter the shoot­ing.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence to­day, Madi­son Po­lice Chief Shon Barnes iden­ti­fied the weapon po­lice found as a hand­gun.

He said the gun­fire was con­fined to one space. He didn’t spec­i­fy whether it was a class­room.

The Madi­son po­lice chief al­so said he didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly know the shoot­er’s mo­tive but added that de­tec­tives were “work­ing hard to find as many an­swers as we can.”

He al­so con­firmed that the shoot­er’s fam­i­ly was co­op­er­at­ing with law en­force­ment.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden called the shoot­ing at the Abun­dant Life Chris­t­ian School “shock­ing and un­con­scionable” in a state­ment Mon­day.

“We need Con­gress to act. Now,” he said.

“From New­town to Uvalde, Park­land to Madi­son, to so many oth­er shoot­ings that don’t re­ceive at­ten­tion - it is un­ac­cept­able that we are un­able to pro­tect our chil­dren from this scourge of gun vi­o­lence. We can­not con­tin­ue to ac­cept it as nor­mal,” he said. “Every child de­serves to feel safe in their class­room. Stu­dents across our coun­try should be learn­ing how to read and write – not hav­ing to learn how to duck and cov­er.”

He said that he and his wife, Jill, are pray­ing for the vic­tims. He thanked first re­spon­ders who ar­rived quick­ly and said the FBI is sup­port­ing lo­cal law en­force­ment ef­forts. His team has al­so reached out to lo­cal of­fi­cials to of­fer fur­ther sup­port, at his di­rec­tion.

He said that while his ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en ag­gres­sive ac­tion to com­bat the gun vi­o­lence epi­dem­ic, more is need­ed:

“Con­gress must pass com­mon­sense gun safe­ty laws: Uni­ver­sal back­ground checks. A na­tion­al red flag law. A ban on as­sault weapons and high-ca­pac­i­ty mag­a­zines.”