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Vice President Joe Biden is conducting a series of gatherings this week aimed at building a consensus around proposals to curb gun violence following the deadly shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school last month.

The vice president is meeting Wednesday with victims groups and gun-safety organizations. On Thursday, Biden will meet with the National Rifle Association and other gun-owner groups. Meetings with representatives from the video-game and entertainment industries are also planned.

Wal-Mart said it previously had not planned to attend the meeting because of its senior leaders' schedule and had spoken in advance with the Vice President's office to share its perspective.

"We underestimated the expectation to attend the meeting on Thursday in person, so we are sending an appropriate representative to participate," company spokesman David Tovar said in a statement Wednesday. "We take this issue very seriously and are committed staying engaged in this discussion as the administration and Congress work toward a consensus on the right path forward."

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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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In an interview with the Jewish Daily Forward, Veronique Pozner shares this alongside other intimate and painful details about her mourning, her son and his relationship with his twin and other siblings.

The six-year-old -- the first Sandy Hook student to be buried because of a Jewish tradition to conduct funerals swiftly -- is described as energetic and academically gifted:

He already knew how to read; he had a vocabulary well beyond his years, using words like “DNA” and “dynamic.”

“He excelled academically,” says [his half-sister] Danielle. “His teachers said he was really, really, smart.”

He was on a constant path of discovery. “It was always, ‘How does this work? Why does this happen?’ He wanted to understand cause and effect,” says Veronique.

Noah also wondered about God, asking his mother, “If God exists then who created God?”

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10 Minutes – Length of time Adam Lanza was shooting

90 (more than) – Number of bullets shot

38 – Number of mass shootings in 2012

$50,000 – Average cost of medical treatment per homicide shooting victim

$2.3 Billion – Total lifetime medical costs for gunshot injuries (as of 1999)

$6 Million – Those medical costs per day

49 Percent – Amount of those lifetime medical costs paid by taxpayers

20 Percent – Number of gun owners with 65 percent of the firearms in the U.S.

36,000 – Number of guns thrown away each year

16,808,538 – Number of applications to purchase guns in the U.S. from January – November 2012 from legal dealers (does not include gun shows or private sales)

5X – Amount this could arm every NATO member state’s armed forces

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I propose we do this by starting attacking not the guns themselves, but gun culture. And we can start by calling for restrictions on the advertising of guns.

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Not only are we failing to protect our children from deranged people wielding semi-automatic guns.

We’re not protecting them from poverty. The rate of child poverty keeps rising – even faster than the rate of adult poverty.

And we’re not protecting their health. Rates of child diabetes and asthma continue to climb.

If we go over the “fiscal cliff” without a budget deal, several programs focused on the well-being of children will be axed — education, child nutrition, school lunches, children’s health, Head Start.  Even if we avoid the cliff, any “grand bargain” to tame the deficit is likely to jeopardize them.

At the same time, states and localities have been slashing preschool and after-school programs, child care, family services, recreation, and mental-health services.

Why?

Conservatives want to blame parents for not doing their job. But this ignores politics.

The NRA, for example, is one of the most powerful lobbies in America – so powerful, in fact, that our leaders rarely have the courage even to utter the words "gun control."

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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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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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But there’s another group working hand-in-glove with the NRA that deserves scrutiny: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, the Koch Brothers-backed group that is funded by big corporate interests, first attracted attention in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing. The group, which brings together corporate interests, right-wing lobbyist groups and conservative politicians, passes model legislation that politicians take back ready-made to their state. The NRA has funded ALEC and co-chaired ALEC’s “Public Safety and Election Task Force,” which passes model bills on guns.

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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 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. Monday classes were canceled, and the district was making plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to a former school building in a neighboring town.

The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, was carrying an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of especially deadly ammunition, authorities said Sunday — enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, raising the chilling possibility that the bloodbath could have been even worse.

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According to the New York Times, the state’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said the victims had bullet wounds "all over, all over."

“This is probably the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen,” Carver, who is 60 and has been Connecticut’s chief medical examiner since 1989, told reporters.

As law enforcement officials piece together details of the unthinkable events inside Sandy Hook elementary school, stories of immense bravery have emerged. Via the AP:

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With the church filled to capacity, hundreds spilled outside, holding hands in circles in the cold night air and saying prayers. Others sang "Silent Night" or huddled near the windows of St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic church.

"Many of us today and in the coming days will rely on what we have been taught and what we believe, that there is faith for a reason," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said at the vigil Mass.

The residents were gathered to mourn those whose lives were lost when a 20-year-old man killed his mother at their home, then descended on Sandy Hook Elementary School, opening fire as youngsters cowered in fear amid the sounds of gunshots and screams. Twenty children were among the 26 dead at the school.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, armed with at least two handguns, committed suicide, authorities said.

Even though there were 26 candles on the altar, Monsignor Robert Weiss said it was important to remember everyone who died, including Lanza and his mother.

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