December 14, 2012: The Sandy Hook Massacre

December 14, 2012: A mentally ill 20-year-old man named Adam Lanza shoots and kills his mother in Newtown, Connecticut. He then goes to Sandy Hook Elementary School, and shoots 20 children and 6 adult staff members. As the police close in, he kills himself.

Newtown, then as now a town of about 27,000 people, was home to rubber innovator Charles Goodyear, film director Elia Kazan, civil rights lawyer Burke Marshall, decathlete-turned-businessman-turned-businesswoman Bruce-turned-Caitlin Jenner, Blossom actress Jenna von Oÿ, and Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games books. The school is about 76 miles northeast of Times Square. Violent crime was rare there: In the 10 years before the Sandy Hook Massacre, there had been only 1 homicide in the town.

At the time, I had a job connected to social media, and it forced me to watch television, going back and forth between the news channels. It was a Friday, when I was allowed to go home at 3:00. This time, I couldn't. I just couldn't. I just sat there, watching the coverage, until I realized how dark it was, first onscreen, figuratively; and then outside, literally; and remembered how I hated the commute home, and left at around 7:00.

It sounds like the story you hear about people, now old, glued to their TV sets after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. (That was also a Friday.) I had already joined the entire country in doing so after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 (a Tuesday -- not after the explosion of Columbia in 2003, though); during the O.J. Simpson freeway chase in 1994 (another Friday); after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (a Tuesday); and after the hit on Osama bin Laden in 2011 (a Sunday night).

Lanza's main weapon was a Bushmaster XM-15, a model of AR-15 automatic rifle. This was hardly the only recent mass shooting in which it had been used. So, now, calls came for its banning, including from the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

But the Republican Party controlled Congress, and absolutely no action was taken.

And so, the war on guns was over, and the guns won. The American people had surrendered to the National Rifle Association. The voters had just re-elected Obama the month before, but had re-elected the Republican Congress as well. It was a message: "This is America. Here, we love our guns more than we love our children." British newspaper columnist Dan Hodges wrote this:

What's more, conspiracy theories blew up, some suggesting that the massacre never happened. And NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre suggested that we should have more guns, not fewer. Leading to a rare agreement in front page headlines of the New York tabloids, the mostly-liberal Daily News and the archconservative New York Post.

There had been genuine wackos in American politics before, during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, to the John Birch Society in the 1960s, to the conspiracy flakes gunning for President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to the Tea Party fanatics that had already been established in 2009, Obama's 1st year in office.

But this now seems, in hindsight, like the launch of the QAnon Era, where such dishonesty, stupidity and ignorance began to be shamelessly brought into the mainstream, and celebrated by people who should have known better.

At the time, I wrote, "The National Rifle Association executives are the homicide equivalent of the archbishops who, rather than turn in abusive priests, transfer them to other parishes."

On June 15, 2016, in the wake of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, Connecticut's Senator Chris Murphy launched a filibuster in the U.S. Senate, promising to hold the floor "for as long as I can" or until Congress acted on gun control legislation.

He eventually secured a commitment from Senate leadership to hold a vote on 2 measures he supported: Expanding background checks, and blocking suspected terrorists from purchasing weapons. He ended his filibuster after 14 hours and 50 minutes.

There appears to be no connection between the school being named "Sandy Hook" and an outcropping of land on the Atlantic Coast of Monmouth County, New Jersey having the same name, which had been hit hard by a hurricane a few weeks earlier, also named Sandy.

In the 2022-23 schoolyear, those children would be juniors in high school.

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As I said, December 14, 2012 was a Friday. No college or pro football games were played. It was the off-season for baseball. The NHL team owners had locked the players out, so there were no games scheduled for the night. But there were 11 games played in the NBA, with the New York Knicks not being involved in any of them. Most had pregame moments of silence held for the victims:

* The Brooklyn Nets beat the Detroit Pistons, 107-105 in 2 overtimes at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Joe Johnson of the Nets led all scorers with 28 points.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Washington Wizards, 102-96 at the Verizon Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington. Kobe Bryant scores 30 points.

* The Toronto Raptors beat the Dallas Mavericks, 95-74 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 90-86 at the Quicken Loans Arena (now the Rocket Arena) in Cleveland. Monta Ellis scored 33 for the Bucks.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 95-85 at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse (now the Gainbridge Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis.

* The Orlando Magic beats the Golden State Warriors, 99-85 at the Amway Center (now the Kia Center) in Orlando.

* The Minnesota Timberwolves beat the New Orleans Pelicans, 113-102 at the New Orleans Arena (now the Smoothie King Center). Nikola Peković scored 31 for the T-Wolves.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Boston Celtics, 101-89 at the Toyota Center in Houston.

* The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Sacramento Kings, 113-103 at the Chesapeake Energy Arena (now the Paycom Center) in Oklahoma City.

* The Denver Nuggets beat the Memphis Grizzlies, 99-94 at the Pepsi Center (now the Ball Arena) in Denver.

* And the Phoenix Suns beat the Utah Jazz, 99-84 at the US Airways Center (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.