Salon.com > Sandy Hook Elementary

Wayne LaPierre’s bizarre pop culture references

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:48:00 +0000

The National Rifle Association has been in a tough spot since the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. As an advocacy group for gun manufacturers and a particular set of gun enthusiasts, it has no interest in new gun-control regulations. But as a powerful political force, it has to say something — otherwise, it’s vulnerable to continued criticism.

This morning, NRA president Wayne LaPierre held a press conference — occasionally interrupted by protesters — in which he explained where the organization stood in light of last week’s violence. But rather than stand behind the modest gun-regulation efforts brewing in Congress or even offer a simple message of condolence, LaPierre decided to go on the offensive, blaming everything from video games, movies, and music — "Natural Born Killers," a 20-year-old film, received a shout out — to Obama’s budget for the proliferation of mass shooters.

Is American media too violent?

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:04:00 +0000

The horrific massacre of schoolchildren and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, has unleashed an unprecedented debate about how to address the problem of mass violence in our country. There is an increasing sense that American society is incapable of protecting its citizens, including young children, the most vulnerable among us.

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.

“Jack Reacher”: Tom Cruise’s terrible timing

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:44:00 +0000

In the larger narrative of Tom Cruise’s late-career comeback, the new Paramount thriller “Jack Reacher” had a clear role to play – at least, before it became toxic, thanks to its accidental and superficial similarity to a real-life tragedy. It would be insulting to suggest that Cruise or Christopher McQuarrie, the film’s writer and director, are “victims” in any way, or that the commercial fate of a mainstream entertainment has any meaning in the face of the unbearable grief and tragedy of Sandy Hook. But it’s also useful to remember that Cruise and McQuarrie have done nothing wrong or unusual, beyond what people in Hollywood do all the time, which is to spin out violent and grotesque fantasies for our enjoyment. I think the problem “Jack Reacher” suddenly represents is more about us than about the movie. Confronted with our evident eagerness to consume simulated real-world horror as entertainment, we feel ashamed, at least temporarily.

7 craziest gun laws in America

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:17:00 +0000

Friday’s deadly rampage at a Connecticut elementary school marked the 13th mass shooting in the United States this year. Among the 11 deadliest shootings in U.S. history, more than half took place in the last five years. During the same period, states have often relaxed their gun laws, making it easier for individuals to obtain guns, extending the places where concealed guns are permitted, or giving gun owners more robust protections.

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

The answer is not more guns

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:30:00 +0000

By now, the response isn’t even surprising. After a horrific massacre like the one in Newtown, Conn., last week, gun-rights advocates will argue that someone with a gun at the scene could have stopped the killer. They conclude that the answer to mass shootings is to arm more people.

This argument is usually made by people who can be easily dismissed, like boffo U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, or Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America. Pratt said this weekend that “gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands” for preventing law-abiding citizens from bringing guns into schools.

But the more guns/less crime argument shouldn’t be dismissed so summarily. There’s an undeniable intuitive logic to it -- if you were facing down an active shooter, wouldn’t you want to be armed? Nearly half of Americans keep a gun in their home -- and the majority say the main reason they do so is to defend themselves. Across the country, states are expanding right to carry laws, which allow permitted citizens to carry concealed weapons for their own defense.

Record sales of guns in America

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:41:00 +0000

As the spotlight turns to gun control following the Connecticut mass shooting, the focus is also on gun sales, which are at record levels.

ABC News reported that during the Black Friday sales last month, Americans bought a record number of guns, with the FBI conducting background checks on 154,000 purchases of firearms.

For the month of November, the number surged to 2 million inquiries.

Lawrence Keane, vice president of gun industry group National Shooting Sports Foundation, told CNN Money in November that modern sporting rifles, a term that he prefers to assault weapons, are "the most popular type of rifles being bought today by Americans."

He said they are used by hunters, target shooters, veterans returning from warzones such as Afghanistan, and citizens who want to protect their property from looters in the wake of recent storms.

Time to profile white men?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, during a cable news discussion of gun violence and the Newtown school shooting, I dared mention a taboo truism. During a conversation on MSNBC's "Up With Chris Hayes," I said that because most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men, there would likely be political opposition to initiatives that propose to use those facts to profile the demographic group to which these killers belong. I suggested that's the case because as opposed to people of color or, say, Muslims, white men as a subgroup are in such a privileged position in our society that they are the one group that our political system avoids demographically profiling or analytically aggregating in any real way. Indeed, unlike other demographic, white guys as a group are never thought to be an acceptable topic for any kind of critical discussion whatsoever, even when there is ample reason to open up such a discussion.

“Newtown, you are not alone”

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A mournful President Barack Obama said Sunday that the nation is failing to keep its children safe, pledging that change must come after an elementary-school massacre left 20 children dead.

"What choice do we have?" Obama said. "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?"

In a vigil for the fallen, in a moment of grief that spread around the world, Obama conceded that none of his words would match the sorrow. But he declared to the community of Newtown: "You are not alone."

For Obama, ending his fourth year in office, it was another sorrowful visit to another community in disbelief. It is the job of the president to be there, to listen and console, to offer help even when the only thing within his grasp is a hug.

The massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday elicited horror around the world, soul-searching in the United States, fresh political debate about gun control and questions about the incomprehensible — what drove the suspect to act.

Privately, Obama told Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy that Friday was the most difficult day of his presidency.

The cafeteria or the first-grade classrooms? “Lanza turned left”

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:51:00 +0000

The Hartford Courant this morning has perhaps the most riveting and horrifying narrative of what went on Friday during the massacre in Newtown.

The story, by Edmund Mahony and Dave Altimari, begins:

Adam Lanza blasted his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He fired a half-dozen thunderous rounds from a semiautomatic rifle to open a hole big enough to step through in one of the school's glass doors.

Once inside, he had to make a choice.

Principal Dawn Hochsprung's office was straight ahead. To the right, 25 or so children were rehearsing a play in the school cafeteria. To his left were the first-grade classrooms.

Lanza turned left.

Among the other details:

* Lanza skipped the first classroom he passed. The teacher, Kaitlin Roig, had already heard the gunfire in the school and barricaded her kids in a bathroom.

* Then he arrived in a class led by a substitute teacher, Lauren Rousseau, "where he proceeded to systematically shoot everyone inside — the 14 children who investigators believe were huddled and clutching one another in fear."

Gun Owners of America: Gun control advocates “have the blood of little children on their hands”

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:18:00 +0000

The advocacy group Gun Owners of America know exactly how the Newtown massacre might have been averted: Guns in schools.

And in the hours after the tragedy, Larry Pratt, the group's executive director is calling on state and federal lawmakers to overturn any bans on guns in schools. More hauntingly, he is suggesting gun control advocates "have the blood of little children on their hands."

Here is his statement:

"Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun."

The Gun Owners of America claim a national membership of 300,000 people.

Don’t talk about gun control!

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 18:50:00 +0000

How many right-wing media voices were citing the shooting in Portland, Ore., this morning to trumpet the sanctity of gun rights and say we shouldn't even talk about gun control? How many of them were making this perverse argument at the very moment the Newtown, Conn., shooting was taking place? And how many of those voices are the same ones who, when it comes to other issues, decry "political correctness"?

The answers to these questions should be obvious: almost certainly, a lot of them. And that is a sign that for all the conservative histrionics decrying liberal "political correctness," the most powerful and most committed "p.c. police" in America are on the right -- specifically, those on the right who claim that any critical discussion of the limits of the Second Amendment must be suppressed because they insult the political ideology of conservatives.

This form of "political correctness" is so routinized that we barely recognize it as the censorship system that it truly is. And as mass shootings become a staple of American life, this system is now ubiquitous.

School shooting liveblog

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:54:00 +0000

[liveblog id=43]