US PRESIDENT Donald Trump said yesterday that he was praying for the families of 17 children and teachers shot dead and 14 others injured at a secondary school in Florida.

Police say that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, equipped with a gas mask, smoke grenades and multiple magazines of ammunition, opened fire with a military-style rifle on students and staff on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Cruz, now charged with 17 counts of murder, set off the fire alarm at the beginning of his slaughter so that the corridors were more crowded with kids.

Police arrested him without a fight an hour later in a residential area nearby.

The US lacks the gun laws of other developed countries, with firearms manufacturers spending large sums to buy the support of national politicians.

They typically claim that the country’s founders promised over 230 years ago that citizens have the right to own deadly weapons.

There have been eight separate shooting incidents in a school which have resulted in injury or death in the US already this year.

Roughly five in every 100,000 US residents are murdered each year, 60 per cent by firearms. The rate in Britain is one per 100,000 and only one in a million is shot.