But nearly three weeks after the Dec. 14 bloodbath, the American far right – from elements of the Tea Party to bigoted bloggers to conspiracy theorists – is working itself into an absolute frothy uproar at even the possibility that it may become more difficult to purchase a military-style assault rifle or a magazine that carries dozens of bullets.

It’s reminiscent of the reaction that surrounded the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. That legislation, which applied only to newly manufactured guns, helped fuel a powerful militia movement – one that has been eclipsed by the recent surge in the anti-government “Patriot” movement, which includes armed militias.

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The two launched the project because, as Slate writes, there are few real-time chronicles of daily gun deaths in the United States, despite the daily mention of firearms and gun politics in the media since the shooting. In fact, the onslaught of reporting on guns has been so intense, The Huffington Post published an article this morning with the headline “So You’re Bored of the Newtown Massacre?”

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With their original school still being treated as a crime scene, the students will begin attending classes at a refurbished school in the neighboring town of Monroe on Thursday. Law enforcement officers have been guarding the new school, and by the reckoning of police, it is "the safest school in America."

Still, Newtown Superintendent Janet Robinson said officials will do their best to make the students feel at ease.

"We will go to our regular schedule," she said. "We will be doing a normal day."

On Wednesday, the students and their families were welcomed at an open house at their new school, which was formerly the Chalk Hill Middle School in Monroe but renamed as the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Students received gift boxes with toys inside and shared joyful reunions with teachers.

One father, Vinny Alvarez, took a moment to thank his third-grade daughter's teacher, Courtney Martin, who protected the class from a rampaging gunman by locking her classroom door and keeping the children in a corner.

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Weekends were spent smoking filched cigarettes at the mall. We chugged medicinal cherry red cough syrup, which I can still somehow taste in the back of my mouth. On one particularly desperate day we took turns trying to inhale smoke from a burning cone of incense. We ordered pure DXM powder (the active ingredient in cough syrup and a potent dissociative) from a vendor of bulk research chemicals. It arrived from Hong Kong in a sealed plastic baggie stamped “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION” and was tucked into the pages of what looked like a Chinese glamour magazine. We ordered painkillers from Habeeb—a guy we found on a now-defunct forum dedicated to reviewing various international pharmacies. We bought Salvia Divinorum extract and tiny silver canisters of compressed laughing gas, as well as various research chemicals: 2C-I, 2C-E, 2C-B. I insufflated—snorted—a miniscule amount of 2C-I and saw the ceiling tiles in my friend’s basement swarm with ants.

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"It's about living in a world that's safe," New Haven attorney Irving Pinsky told The Associated Press on Saturday. "The answer is about protecting the kids."

Pinsky asked this week to sue the state, which has immunity against most lawsuits unless it gives a party permission to go forward with a claim. Connecticut's claims commissioner couldn't be reached for comment Saturday.

Pinksy's client, whom he calls "Jill Doe" in the claim, sustained "emotional and psychological trauma and injury" on Dec. 14 after gunman Adam Lanza forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and gunned down 20 children and six adults inside in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

The child heard "conversations, gunfire and screaming" over Sandy Hook's intercom after someone in the office apparently switched on the system, according to the claim. Pinsky said Saturday he didn't know whether his client saw anyone die.

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Nouel Alba was arrested and arraigned in a Hartford court on Thursday, on charges that she lied to federal agents about an alleged fraud scheme connected to the shootings.

From NBC Connecticut:

Last week, NBC’s Jeff Rossen reported that Alba posted a solicitation on Facebook within hours of the shooting, identifying herself as an aunt of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old victim.

Later, as families were grieving and the nation was looking for any and every way to help the victims’ families, she asked for funds to pay for the funeral, Rossen reported.

At Alba's instruction on the Facebook page "Victorian Glam Fairys," donors sent money to a PayPal account that Alba controlled and accessed, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

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Yes, it's important to focus attention on the increase in the size and savagery of the murders: Six of the 12 most deadly shootings in our history have occurred within the past five years. The vast majority of the world's worst mass shootings have taken place in the United States. And there have been 65 mass shootings since Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in 2009. Still, despite their horror, mass murders like Newtown are thankfully rare. So we must pay attention to the daily violence, too. Nearly 13,000 homicides were committed in the U.S. in 2010, 8,775 with firearms. So in addition to the most heartbreaking, large-scale killings, the problem is pervasive and the bloodshed overwhelming.

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It follows that the NRA’s slogan, to the effect that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is moot at best—the killers in every case were sentient beings, but not one was a person at the law or anywhere else in the landscape of possibility most of us can take for granted.  Not one was an individual who came to the scene of the crime equipped with a conscience, thus able to make moral choices.

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Apparently fearful from the moment the story broke that serious gun control -- particularly a ban on sales of the sort of assault rifle used by killer Adam Lanza, and the large-capacity magazines that allowed him to kill so many so quickly -- was in the offing, paranoids and gun enthusiasts rushed sporting goods shops in order to score those very items.

The right has long sold the line that President Barack Obama is coming for the guns of people who fancy themselves to be the "real" Americans, and it now appears that he might at least, after four years of inaction, seek to enact meaningful gun safety laws.

One major gun seller, the Dick's Sporting Goods chain, has suspended sales of types of several rifles, including the model used by Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

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This weekend I will fly to JFK—silently aware of the grim ballistic association—and then drive with my wife and eight-year-old daughter to Newtown, CT.

To celebrate Christmas.

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We take a closer look at some of the more striking measures:

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Amid that horror, Chinese netizens gave an outpouring of condolences for Americans affected by the Newtown tragedy. Throughout the weekend, thousands of Chinese shared online images of lit candles and heartfelt expressions of sympathy for the 20 children and seven adults who were killed in Newtown, Conn.

“Today is a sad day for the entire world,” wrote Weibo-user Zheng Yuanjie, one of many who linked the Connecticut attack to China’s own tragedy.

On Monday, the hashtag “Honoring Ordinary Heroes” stayed at or near the top of the most popular topics on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, with many users praising the teacher Victoria Soto, who died saving her students from the gunman. Little gloating or schadenfreude over America's loss was anywhere to be found.

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The scholarly journal American Behavioral Scientist devoted two issues in 2009 to the 10^th anniversary of the Columbine High School mass killings and what, if anything, we have learned from them. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University, contributed an essay in which he called mass school shootings “the worst possible case for gun control.”

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CBS News highlighted that Ryan Kraft, who now lives in California, recalled stern warnings from Nancy Lanza, Adam's murdered mother, to never turn his back on Adam, "not even to go to the bathroom." He did not expound upon reasons for these instructions.

Kraft said he was shocked and devastated when he heard news of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary (also his alma mater). He remembers Adam as an intense, quiet child: "Whenever we were doing something, whether it was building Legos, or playing video games, he was really focused on it. It was like he was in his own world," Kraft said.

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As CBS reported Monday, legal documents from the divorce of Nancy and Peter Lanza "offer no hints of an acrimonious split and make no mention of any lingering mental health or medical issues for the then-teenage boy."

Adam Lanza shot his mother four times in the head at the Newtown home where had lived his entire life, before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. As Salon noted earlier, Nancy Lanza kept a large collection of guns as a part of a survivalist mentality.

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At 1 p.m. [Monday], shiva and memorial services will be held for the youngest victim, Noah Pozner, who turned six last month. At the same time, a funeral will be held for his classmate Jack Pinto, six. A wake is scheduled this evening for James Mattioli, six, whose funeral will take place on Tuesday.

In the Jewish tradition, burials are supposed to take place shortly after death, hence Pozner's funeral taking place first.

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The people of Newtown weren't yet ready to address the question just three days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and a day after President Barack Obama pledged to seek change in memory of the children and six adults ruthlessly slain by a gunman packing a high-powered rifle.

"We're just now getting ready to talk to our son about who was killed," said Robert Licata, the father of a student who escaped harm during the shooting. "He's not even there yet."

Newtown officials couldn't say whether Sandy Hook Elementary, where authorities said all the victims were shot at least twice, would ever reopen. State police Lt. Paul Vance said Monday at a news conference that it could be months before police turn the school back over to the district.

Monday classes were canceled and Newtown's other schools were to reopen Tuesday. The district was making plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to a former school building in a neighboring town, but they didn't say when that would happen.

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At The Atlantic website, I read a piece by Edward Small, a reporter who attended the school in Newtown when he was a kid and I remember my own elementary school in a small town in upstate New York. In those days, the only emergency drills we ever had were the duck-and-cover alerts that sent us into the hallways or under our desks during the depths of Cold War hysteria; the only violence was getting shoved from behind by a bully, books and binder flying.

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The little girl was the first person to escape the school; she ran out of the building "covered from head to toe with blood" according to the account of a local pastor, who has been counseling the child's mother. "The first thing she said to her mom was, 'Mommy, I'm OK but all my friends are dead,'" Pastor Jim Solomon told ABC.

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