Salon.com > Connecticut shooting

Newtown Congressman calls NRA statement “revolting”

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:17:00 +0000

In a tweet, Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., whose district encompasses Newtown, called NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre's press conference "revolting" and "tone deaf."

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Other politicians reacted similarly to LaPierre's speech, which called for "armed police officers in every single school in this nation.”

"It is beyond belief that following the Newtown tragedy, the National Rifle Association’s leaders want to fill our communities with guns and arm more Americans, said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., in a statement."The NRA points the finger of blame everywhere and anywhere it can, but they cannot escape the devastating effects of their reckless comments and irresponsible lobbying tactics."

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Schools on lockdown in two Connecticut towns

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Reuters is reporting that all schools in Ridgefield, Connecticut are in lockdown "because of a suspicious person who might be armed." Police said that schools in nearby Redding are also closed as a precautionary measure.

Lieutenant Paul Vance of Connecticut State Police said at a news conference, "I'm aware of that situation in the town of Ridgefield. ... There's a report of a suspicious person, a suspicious person that may or may not be armed."

Ridgefield is 20 miles from Newtown, Connecticut, where Friday's horrific school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school took place.

When Democrats won on guns

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who has been at forefront of the debate over gun access for two decades, said on Sunday that she’ll introduce legislation to revive the federal assault weapons ban when the new Congress convenes in January. She also said that she expects President Obama, who vowed at Sunday night's memorial service in Newtown, Connecticut to "“use whatever power this office holds” to prevent future tragedies, to join the fight. But even though there are hints that the political climate on guns really is shifting, the odds of Feinstein's bill becoming law still aren’t that good.

To understand what Feinstein and other gun control advocates are up against, it’s worth recapping the history of the assault weapons ban, which was first enacted in 1994 and expired without congressional action in 2004. Since then, there has been intermittent talk of trying to bring it back, generally in the wake of mass shootings like the one in Connecticut last Friday. But in the eight years since it lapsed, neither the House nor the Senate has ever voted on restoring the ban, and even though President Obama says he supports doing so, he’s not made it a legislative priority.

How America’s toxic culture breeds mass murder

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000

As a parent, an American and a human being, I'm having trouble functioning in the wake of Friday’s elementary-school shootings in Newtown, Conn. You’ll read this some hours after I write it, so you’ll know more than I do now about the children and adults who have died and the families who are enduring unbearable losses, and about the life and death of Adam Lanza, the young man who apparently inflicted them. Those things are dreadfully important to the people involved, but they won’t change the bigger picture much. That’s a picture of grief and horror and profound collective mystification about how such a thing could happen, a picture of a disordered culture that produces these spectacular outbreaks of psychotic violence more and more often, even in an era of relatively low crime.

While the grief and horror are understandable, as well as fully justified – I’m forcing myself to move my fingers across the keyboard, when I would probably be better off sitting quietly in a darkened room, or spending time with my own children – maybe we shouldn’t be quite as bewildered as we claim to be. I don’t mean that we should understand, or even try to understand, how a person can become so angry and sick that he picks up a gun and starts shooting other people’s children at random. There may be artists and psychiatrists and philosophers who can glean something useful from looking into that kind of hateful and bottomless despair, but I sure don’t want to do it.

UPDATE: 26 dead in Connecticut school shooting

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 18:16:00 +0000

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) - CBS News is reporting at least 27 people, including children, have died in shooting at a Connecticut elementary school Friday morning.

The shooter was killed and apparently had two guns, a person with knowledge of the shooting said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.

It wasn't clear how many people were injured at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. A dispatcher at the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps said a teacher had been shot in the foot and taken to Danbury Hospital.

Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.