The front page of the December 15th edition of the New York Daily News says it all (graphic courtesy of the Newseum)
This past weekend was supposed to be when I would "regroup" and start up my postings here but that all changed with the news last Friday of a school shooting in Connecticut. Although Americans have grown used to hearing such information with growing frequency in recent years, this one was different due to the setting and the method in which the gunman committed his heinous deed. When Adam Lanza put a semi-automatic pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger as first responders arrived on the scene, he had already taken the lives of 27 other people (his mother back at their shared residence and 26 at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School). Of the school fatalities, 20 were first grade students between the ages of 6 and 7 and all of them were shot multiple times with a semi-automatic assault rifle (one child, Noah Posner, was struck 11 times). The other six were all women who worked at the school, to include the principal, the school psychiatrist, and four teachers and aides in the targeted classrooms.