US marks 10-year anniversary of Sandy Hook school shooting

The Connecticut assault was one of many deadliest shootings in trendy United States historical past, leaving 20 youngsters and 6 educators lifeless.

Sandy Hook
A household embraces as they observe a memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook taking pictures in December 2012 [File: Craig Ruttle/AP Photo]

Officers and members of the family in the USA are commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook faculty taking pictures, one of many deadliest in trendy US historical past.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden used the event to induce lawmakers to go laws banning “assault weapons and high-capacity magazines”, much like these used within the taking pictures.

The assault occurred on December 14, 2012 and killed 20 younger youngsters and 6 faculty employees.

“We must always have societal guilt for taking too lengthy to cope with this downside,” Biden stated in a press release. “We now have an ethical obligation to go and implement legal guidelines that may stop these items from taking place once more.”

Within the 10 years because the lethal assault in Newtown, Connecticut, gun violence and faculty shootings have continued to plague the US. In Could, an assault on an elementary faculty in Uvalde, Texas left 19 youngsters and two academics lifeless. As with the Sandy Hook taking pictures, the gunman used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.

Following the assault, survivors of the Sandy Hook taking pictures voiced help for the victims in Uvalde over social media.

“I’m sick at what you're going via immediately,” tweeted Mary Ann Jacob, who was working as a librarian at Sandy Hook when the 20-year-old gunman attacked. “I'm transported again to the firehouse that we have been dropped at after the taking pictures at our college virtually 10 years in the past. I’m so sorry these deaths didn't change our world.”

To this point in 2022, the Gun Violence Archive has tallied 628 mass shootings within the US, outlined as 4 or extra folks shot in a single occasion, not together with the gunman. Of these, 36 have been mass murders, the place 4 or extra folks have been killed.

They embody incidents like a November taking pictures in a Walmart break room in Chesapeake, Virginia that left six victims lifeless and a July taking pictures at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Seven folks, together with a neighborhood synagogue trainer, the mother and father of a two-year-old youngster and a Mexican grandfather visiting his household, died in that taking pictures.

In November, the gunman who carried out a 2018 taking pictures at a Parkland, Florida, highschool was sentenced to life in jail with out the potential for parole. That assault killed 17 folks and injured 17 others.

Lawmakers have pushed for extra sturdy adjustments to the nation’s gun legal guidelines within the aftermath of high-profile assaults, with entry to firearms ceaselessly cited as an element within the prevalence of mass shootings. However these efforts have largely failed to maneuver ahead over Republican opposition.

One exception was a invoice handed in June following the Uvalde taking pictures. Lawmakers got here collectively to increase background checks, present funding for psychological well being services, and lengthen federal assist to states implementing “pink flag” legal guidelines, designed to facilitate court docket orders to quickly take away weapons from people deemed harmful.

Whereas lawmakers touted the legislation as essentially the most bold in a long time, critics identified that the invoice doesn't embody a ban on semiautomatic “assault” rifles or obligatory background checks for all gun patrons, each seen as baseline calls for by gun reform advocates.

“I'm decided to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines like these used at Sandy Hook and numerous different mass shootings in America,” stated Biden in his assertion on Wednesday. “Sufficient is sufficient. Our obligation is evident.”

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