The shooting tragedy at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary: “What happened Friday in Newtown, Conn., was a variant on what the country has witnessed repeatedly in recent years. Once again, it was a pseudo-commando attack, as if the killer were playing a video game and racking up points for every victim. Once again, the crime appeared to be staged for maximum shock value. And once again — just as in Aurora, Colo., this past summer — there was the element of overkill, with multiple weapons, a military-style rifle and massive amounts of ammunition.” (Washington Post)
Politico’s Arena asks: Two days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and others took to the Sunday shows to advocate for reform to the nation’s gun control laws. Feinstein announced that she would introduce a federal assault weapons ban in the Senate, while Schumer called for restrictions on bullet clips and increased help for the mentally ill. Is it appropriate for politicians use this time, in any capacity, to reexamine gun control? Why or why not?
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On Sunday night, President Obama spoke at a vigil for those who died in the Newtown, Conn., tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school. (Washington Post)
Now is the time for meaningful gun control: We should mourn, but we should be angry. The horror in Newtown, Conn., should shake us out of the cowardice, the fear, the evasion and the opportunism that prevents our political system from acting to curb gun violence. How often must we note that no other developed country has such massacres on a regular basis because no other comparable nation allows such easy access to guns? And on no subject other than ungodly episodes involving guns are those who respond logically by demanding solutions accused of ‘politicizing tragedy,'” writes Brookings’ E.J. Dionne. (Washington Post)
Gun-rights advocates feeling heat after school shooting: “Those who support the Second Amendment say they feel just as horrified and numb as any other American after Friday’s massacre of kindergartners and other young children at a Connecticut school. But now, as the call for new gun-control laws increases, gun owners say they also feel under attack. These are the people who see guns as an answer to the problem of violence, not the problem itself. They worry that their Second Amendment rights will be taken away. Challenged by those who see any gun as an instrument of destruction, they defend their belief that guns are beneficial. Harder still is to explain the allure of weapons like the .223-caliber Bushmaster, a military-style semiautomatic rifle that a some want banned.” (Washington Post)
War at Home: “How many times will we allow these atrocities to occur before we find the courage and the will to intervene? What is the point of having a self-governing society if we can’t—or won’t—protect kindergarten pupils from the flood-tide of killing set loose by a gun culture that has gone stark raving mad. There is no way to overstate the horror of gun violence in America. Guns have killed well over a million Americans since Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were murdered in 1968. That includes victims of homicides, suicides and accidental shootings. Nearly 100,000 people are shot in the U.S. every year and more than 30,000 die from their wounds,” writes Bob Herbert of Demos. (PolicyShop)
Some are turning in their guns following Connecticut shooting. (ThinkProgress)
“We have a responsibility to help those politicians find the courage to do the right thing. We must offer up better ideas. To start, it might be useful to return to our roots and revisit the idea of what it means to maintain “a well-regulated militia” that is “necessary to the security of a free State,” to quote the language in our Second Amendment. Simply put, we must put an end to unfettered access to guns,” writes Truman’s Friedman. (New York Daily News)
All 31 pro-gun Senators refused invitations to appear on ‘Meet The Press.’ (ThinkProgress)