Absolute horror, absolute heartbreak.
In today’s age of distractions, fractured focus and busy lives, absolute horror froze us as a nation Friday, as a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in suburban Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 people, 20 of them children under age 11. Suspected gunman Adam Lanza, 20, reportedly killed several adults in the school office, including the principal, before walking into two classrooms where his mother usually taught and fatally shot the students there. He then killed himself. In a search of the suspect’s home soon after, authorities reportedly discovered his mother’s body.
Because of its magnitude and the young victims involved, this mass shooting could well be the most heinous in recent U.S. history. It evokes memories of the Virgina Tech tragedy, America’s worst shooting in recent history, in which a gunman opened fire on the Blacksburg, Va., campus in April 2007, leaving 32 dead before killing himself.
The sheer scope of Friday’s violence, coming as it did in the close-knit, idyllic town of Newtown, in the midst of the holiday season, is already profoundly affecting. But to know that 20 innocent children, between ages 5 to 10, were gunned down in the perceived safety of their classroom, is beyond comprehension.
"Our hearts are broken," President Barack Obama said in a nationally televised news conference, his voice breaking and wiping tears away.
"As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown or a shopping mall in Oregon or a temple in Wisconsin or a movie theater in Aurora or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children," Obama said. "And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics."
This shooting will likely provoke action; already, it is reviving a national debate over gun control laws, a controversial issue Obama has largely skirted in his re-election campaign.
In an October presidential debate in New York, Obama prefaced his gun-control answer by saying he believes in the Second Amendment — the right to own and bear arms — then verbalized his commitment to enforcing existing gun-control laws, making sure they keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill and doing more to enforce background checks. He also said then he would look into reinstating the assault weapon ban, which he supported in his 2008 campaign.
Friday’s Connecticut tragedy was the second mass shooting this week, and the latest in recent high-profile violence in the United States. On Tuesday, a gunman opened fire in a Portland, Ore., busy mall filled with holiday shoppers, murdering two people before killing himself.
Hawaii, too, is not immune, and bears the deep community scars of mass murder. In November 1999, Byran Uyesugi opened fire at his Xerox workplace on Nimitz Highway, killing seven co-workers; he is serving a lifetime in prison. That violence spurred a new state law requiring doctors to reveal information about the mental state of potential gun owners.
The horror of Friday’s Connecticut school shooting will not ease anytime soon. Simply, this classroom shooting that left so many young victims dead is a tragedy that hurts the heart, and catches the throat.
"The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old," an emotional Obama said.
To be sure, many more developments will unfold about this incident, and more recollections of terror as well as heroism are sure to emerge.
The public policy debates will rage — about gun control laws, mental health warnings and help, dysfunctional families, post-traumatic stress, safety in schools. All that and more will come, as they should. But for today, what feels most right is to gather your children and loved ones close, and just hold them tight.
