Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

 
Massacre of Children in Connecticut Elementary School Points to the Violent US Fire Arms Culture


President Obama Speaks on the Shooting in Connecticut

 

Statement by the President on the School Shooting in Newtown, CT

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

White House, December 14, 2012,  3:15 P.M. EST

 

THE PRESIDENT:

This afternoon, I spoke with Governor Malloy and FBI Director Mueller. I offered Governor Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation, and made it clear he will have every single resource that he needs to investigate this heinous crime, care for the victims, counsel their families.

We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news I react not as a President, but as anybody else would -- as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.

The majority of those who died today were children -- beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them -- birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers -- men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams.

So our hearts are broken today -- for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost. Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.

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. And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight. And they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans. And I will do everything in my power as President to help.

Because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need -- to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories but also in ours.

May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.

END 3:20 P.M. EST

 

Families of victims grieving near Sandy Hook Elementary School, CT, December 14, 2012	Families of victims grieving near Sandy Hook Elementary School, CT, December 14, 2012

 

Police find "good evidence" on motive for Connecticut school massacre

By Ernest Scheyder and Edward Krudy

Sat Dec 15, 2012, 2:46pm EST

NEWTOWN, Connecticut (Reuters) -

Investigators assembled "some very good evidence" to explain what drove a 20-year-old gunman to slaughter 20 children and six adults at an elementary school, police said on Saturday, a day after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history shattered a small Connecticut town.

The attacker, identified by law enforcement sources as Adam Lanza, opened fire on Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, which teaches children aged 5 to 10. The shooter killed 26 people - including first-graders, who would be about 6 years old - before turning the gun on himself.

He was also suspected of killing another person, possibly his mother, before the massacre.

"Our investigators at the crime scene ... did produce some very good evidence in this investigation that our investigators will be able to use in, hopefully, painting the complete picture as to how - and more importantly why - this occurred," Connecticut State Police Lieutenant Paul Vance told a news conference.

The shooting has tormented the town of Newtown, once listed as the fifth-safest city in the America but now in crisis.

"This recovery is going to be not a sprint but a marathon. It's going to be a long process," said U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Yale-New Haven Hospital opened a crisis-intervention center in the wealthy suburb of 27,000 people about 80 miles from New York City. By mid-morning, about 50 cars were parked outside. A sign warned media to stay away.

The tragedy moved President Barack Obama to tears on national television on Friday and rattled a country that has grown accustomed to mass shootings, but not with victims so young. It also stood to revive a debate about U.S. gun laws.

Obama, in his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, called for "meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this," but stopped short of specifically calling for tighter gun-control laws.

"The kids who died were in two first-grade classrooms (6-year-olds)," said Mary Ann Jacob, a school library clerk who described leading children out of danger during the shooting.

'EVIL IS A CHOICE'

About 50 people gathered for a service at St. John's Episcopal Church in the neighboring town of Sandy Hook to remember the victims, ending the service by singing the hymn "Amazing Grace."

"Evil is a choice. It does not come from God," the Reverend Mark Moore said in his sermon. "Even though evil can overcome us, it cannot overcome God."

"In the end, all will be well," he said, and the people responded with a loud "Amen."

Afterward, Mary Fellows, 49, a life-long resident of Sandy Hook, said she went to the service to try to find peace while waiting to discover if she knew any of the victims. "Even if you didn't know their names, you know their faces," Fellows said.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation headquarters sits just up the street from the grief center. White holiday candles had been placed in its back windows. A security guard shooed away any visitors.

Vance, the police spokesman, declined to describe the evidence gathered about the shooter's motives but did say the gunman forced his way into the school.

Crime-scene investigators worked through the night and moved the bodies to the state medical examiner's office for autopsies, police said in a statement. Victims' names had yet to be released.

The woman found dead at the secondary crime scene was related to the shooter, a police news release said. Many media outlets have reported she was the shooter's mother, Nancy Lanza.

Nancy Lanza legally owned a Sig Sauer and a Glock, both handguns of models commonly used by police, and a military-style Bushmaster .223 M4 carbine, according to law enforcement officials who also believe Adam Lanza used at least some of those weapons.

"We're investigating the history of each and every weapon, and we will know every single thing about those weapons," Vance said.

Nancy Lanza was an avid gun collector who once showed him a "really nice, high-end rifle" that she had purchased, said Dan Holmes, owner of a landscaping business who recently decorated her yard with Christmas garlands and lights. "She said she would often go target shooting with her kids."

Newtown was ranked the fifth safest city in America by the website NeighborhoodScout.com based on 2011 crime statistics.

"This wonderful town that we all love for its peace, beauty, the great schools - all of that - has become Columbine," said Julie Maxwell Shull, a sixth-grade teacher at Reed Intermediate School, referring to the high school that was site of a 1999 shooting in Colorado.

The holiday season tragedy was the second shooting rampage in the United States this week and the latest in a series of mass killings this year.

In another incident, Oklahoma police arrested an 18-year-old high school student on charges that he was plotting to carry out a shooting and bombing massacre at his school, according to the Tulsa World newspaper.

Police said in an affidavit Chavez tried to recruit other Bartlesville High School students to help him lure classmates into the school auditorium, where he planned to chain the doors shut and start shooting them, the newspaper said.

The Connecticut massacre revived a debate about gun-control in a country with a flourishing firearms culture and a strong lobby that has discouraged most politicians from any major efforts to address the easy availability of guns and ammunition.

The death toll exceeded that of one of the most notorious U.S. school shootings, the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two teenagers murdered 13 students and staff before killing themselves.

(Additional reporting by Edith Honan, Rob Cox, Chris Kaufman, Dave Gregorio, Chris Francescani, and Edward Krudy; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Will Dunham)

 

Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) ,

CHRIS CUOMO (@ChrisCuomo) and RICHARD ESPOSITO

ABC TV, Dec. 14, 2012

Alleged Sandy Hook Elementary shooter Adam Lanza is seen in this 2005 photo, ABC News, Dec 14, 2012

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.

This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then drove her car to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with two handguns and a semi-automatic rifle.

There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot and killed 20 children, who President Obama later described as "beautiful little kids" between five and 10 years of age. Six adults were also killed at the school. Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home.

A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."

Family friends in Newtown also described the young man as troubled and described Nancy as rigid. "[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said Barbara Frey, who also said he was "a little bit different ... Kind of repressed."

State and federal authorities believe his mother may have once worked at the elementary school where Adam went on his deadly rampage, although she was not a teacher, according to relatives, perhaps a volunteer.

Nancy and her husband Peter, Adam's father, divorced in 2009. When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."

Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.

Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.

"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.

Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.

Two federal sources told ABC News that identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the scene of the mass shooting. They say that identification may have led to the confusion by authorities during the first hours after the shooting. Neither Adam nor Ryan has any known criminal history.

A Sig Sauer handgun and a Glock handgun were used in the slayings and .223 shell casings – a round used in a semi-automatic military-style rifle -- were also found at the scene. Nancy Lanza had numerous weapons registered to her, including a Glock and a Sig Sauer. She also owned a Bushmaster rifle -- a semi-automatic carbine chambered for a .223 caliber round. However, federal authorities cannot confirm that the handguns or the rifle were the weapons recovered at the school.

Numerous relatives of the Lanzas in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, as well as multiple friends, are being interviewed by the FBI in an effort to put together a better picture of the gunman and any explanation for today's tragedy.

"I think the most important thing to point out with this kind of individual is that he did not snap this morning and decide to act out violently," said former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole. "These acts involve planning and thoughtfulness and strategizing in order to put the plan together so what may appear to be snap behavior is not that at all."

With reporting by Pierre Thomas, Jim Avila, Santina Leuci, Aaron Katersky, Matthew Mosk, Jason Ryan and Jay Shaylor

MORE: 27 Dead, Mostly Children, at Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

LIVE UPDATES: Newton, Conn. School Shooting

Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.

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America's 'historic attachment to guns'

By Jon FROSCH (text)

France 24, 23/07/2012 --

 

France24.com spoke with a specialist in US gun culture and weapons laws following the fatal shooting at a Colorado movie theatre last Friday. Dr. Robert Spitzer sheds light on the origins of and latest developments in a longstanding US debate.

***

Last Friday, 24-year old James Holmes opened fire on the audience at a suburban Colorado movie theatre, killing 12 and injuring many more. The incident has revived the longstanding debate over guns in America, with many wondering when the US will finally implement stricter gun control laws.

In a conversation with France24.com, Doctor Robert Spitzer, professor of political science at State University of New York at Cortland and author of “The Politics of Gun Control”, offered insight into the American attachment to guns, why US gun laws are lenient, and whether or not President Obama will try to change things.

Here are some highlights from the interview.

FRANCE24: Why have gun control laws in America remained so lax? Dr Robert Spitzer: In the last decade, the gun issue has been pushed off the American political agenda. One reason is that Democrats at a national level thought the issue hurt them in the 2000 presidential election. Al Gore was pro-gun-control, and he lost. So Democrats started to back away from the gun issue, partly to rebuild their party by attracting more conservative, pro-gun Democrats.

US gun violence on the decline

Both the General Social Survey (GSS) and FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics show violent crime rates in the US at their lowest point since 1972, and murder rates at their lowest point since the early 1960s.

GSS has also shown that the percentage of Americans who keep a gun at home has declined from roughly 50% in the 1970s to roughly 33% today. Gallup recorded a less marked decline from roughly 50% in the 1970s to 40% today.

Secondly, George W. Bush was the most gun-friendly president in US history. So that enabled the agenda of the gun lobby, especially the NRA [National Rifle Association], to advance greatly.

Thirdly, in 2008, the very conservative Supreme Court said for the first time in US history that there is a personal, individual right of US citizens to own guns [in a decision striking down a ban on handguns in Washington DC]. The second amendment had already been interpreted for over 200 years as saying that, but in reality, the amendment refers to the right of “a well-regulated militia” to bear arms - not any ordinary citizen. The Supreme Court declaration in 2008 provided a degree of legal legitimacy that the gun lobby had long sought.

Another part of the complexity is that there are 50 states; some states have restrictive laws like New York. Others, like Colorado, don’t.

F24: Where does the American public stand on the issue?

RS: Public support for stronger gun laws exists, but gun rights people feel very strongly about their issue. Polls have shown a majority of Americans in favour of stricter gun laws. But this is a case of a relatively apathetic majority up against a small, but highly motivated pro-gun constituency that works on this issue all the time.

There is also a historic attachment to guns in America. Much of it is romanticized and exaggerated, but there certainly is a long strain in our history connecting Americans to guns; guns came to America with the earliest European settlers. In addition, there is a tradition of American individualism. Many Americans believe that the best remedy for their problems or insecurities is to deal with them on their own. Sometimes that means picking up a gun instead of asking for help.

F24: Have incidents like the shooting in Colorado last week, or the shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last year, led to a push for stricter gun control laws?

RS: After the shooting at a high school in Columbine in 1999, the federal government enacted new gun measures, but they were ultimately beaten back before they became law.

Other than that, there have been specific legal remedies. There was a law called the Federal Assault Weapons Ban [signed in 1994], but the law was written with an expiry date and Congress let it expire in 2004. That law banned possession of certain types of assault weapons, including the weapon James Holmes used in Aurora last week. The law banned possession of large-capacity bullet clips, so people could only purchase guns that could hold 10 bullets. But since the law expired in 2004, Holmes was able to use a weapon that held 100 bullets at a time. It’s like something out of a science fiction novel, frankly.

After the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech in 2007, Congress enacted legislation to improve record-keeping of people with mental problems, so these people would not be able to purchase guns. When someone in America goes to buy a gun, there is a background check process. The gun salesperson submits your name electronically, and checks it against a list that includes felons and those who have been declared mentally incompetent. But there is a big loophole, because before 2007, most states did not report their “mentally incompetent” residents.

Right now there are calls for stronger gun laws, but with no strong sustained national advocacy, little has happened. F24: Has President Obama tried to change things?

RS: Obama, in his political background, has been a supporter of gun control. However, he clearly made a decision to not press that issue when he became president. He felt he needed to spend his political capital in other areas. America is in the middle of a presidential campaign, and you would think the issue would have to be discussed by candidates. But neither candidate wants to talk about gun control. Obama does not want to inflame the right wing, and he wants to keep the focus on the issues he’s worked on.

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is trying to paint himself as more moderate and centrist, and the gun issue is one on which his party is in thrall to the NRA. Romney doesn’t want to offend the NRA people, but he doesn’t want to champion the cause either because it pulls him away from the centre.

The current political environment is not conducive to change on this issue. Neither party at a national level wants to wrap its arms around this subject right now.

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Date created : 23/07/2012