ten years after Sandy Hook
The buildings had to be razed, the following year, so contaminated they were with death. The President wept on television. The head of the NRA denounced video games and called for armed security in every school. The Senate Minority Leader cited from the book of Revelation the day when “there will be no more death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain.” Gun sales surged after the shooting. Accidental gun deaths spiked. More states passed legislation relaxing gun laws than restricted them.
School shootings have long been a feature of American life. But ten years ago, I remember feeling, as many did, that the country had arrived at some new region of depravity. That if nothing happened after this massacre, the season of ritual killing would remain indefinitely open. The freedom to wield would continue to surpass the freedom from harm. After the massacre, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 failed in the Senate, 60-40. The Manchin-Toomey proposal, which would have established background checks, also failed.
The amount of gun deaths and mass shootings in this country is staggering, particularly when compared to other countries, and to mention one massacre is inevitably, disrespectfully, to invoke another.
This May, another shooter made his way into another elementary school, in Uvalde, Texas. On leaked surveillance footage, the cops who had responded to the scene fist-bumped each other and applied hand sanitizer in the hallway while children were murdered in their classrooms. Nineteen fourth graders and two teachers were killed. A pediatric surgeon from Uvalde testified that many of the bodies were only recognizable by the shreds of their shirts.
Once again, the politicians deflected blame and continued the American tradition of sharpening Christian hope into merciless determinism. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a beneficiary of significant NRA donations, said that “I believe God always has a plan. Life is short no matter what it is.”
In the wake of the Uvalde massacre, the police chief was fired, though there was no hope for gun restrictions in Texas, one of the most pro-gun states in the country. There was, however, gun control legislation finally signed into law by the President. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, though meager, was the strongest federal gun control in decades, requiring extended background checks for gun buyers under 21 and partially closing the boyfriend loophole. To celebrate, House Democrats sang “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps. Across the street, protestors clamored against the Supreme Court decision, passed down that day, which had overturned Roe v. Wade.
There have been other minor victories, recompenses which may or may not ever be paid. In October, Alex Jones, the raving impresario of InfoWars, who made millions amplifying outlandish lies—that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, that the children never died, that there were actors performing in front of a green screen—was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to several of the families. Wolfgang Halbig, a conspiracy theorist and onetime collaborator with Jones, who besieged the Newtown government with public records requests and demands to exhume the children’s bodies, was arrested in 2020. He, like Jones, has since declared bankruptcy.
Some of the Sandy Hook families sued Remington, manufacturer of the .223 caliber Bushmaster XM15-E2S that the killer used, arguing that the company marketed its lethal products as effective against other humans. In Supreme Court filings, the families describe how
One Bushmaster product catalogue showed soldiers moving on patrol through the jungle, armed with Bushmaster rifles, and stated that ‘[w]hen you need to perform under pressure, Bushmaster delivers.’ […] Despite evidence that rifles like the XM15-E2S have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, […] petitioners’ advertising continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman, proclaiming: ‘Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.’
In February, having filed for bankruptcy in part to avoid liability, Remington settled with nine families for $73 million.
These mass shootings, which are uniquely American in their magnitude and frequency, are themselves entirely unutterable. Yet they are always crowded with utterance. The strange political celebrations and promises. The thoughts and prayers. The fearmongers and opportunists and lobbyists with their apologias of death. The men and women who speak of freedom as they devour the murderous heart of its meaning.
When Mitch McConnell read from Revelation ten years ago, he could have skipped down a few verses for something more fitting: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
The second death. This country dies it, again and again. This country tests its limits by annihilating them. Free, free, free. Shell casings plinking on church pews, on polished vinyl floors.
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Hounded for years by truthers and maniacs, doxxers and death threats, requests for comments or proof that their children actually existed, the Sandy Hook families have compiled a site with descriptions of their lost loved ones. It is better that you read them there, and on the pages they link to, where the families can speak for themselves. About Avielle, who gave names to things, like Efford and Maeve, the two maple trees by her house. About Daniel, who sat next to a classmate with special needs, who always found her glasses when she lost them. About Ben, who careened around the house, pretending to be a cyclone; whose pencil-marked height will remain fixed on the door frame while his siblings’ continue up the wall.
These small facts glow against the dark screen. There should have been more life, the rest of life, to compile and recount: these habits and passions embraced or shed with age, these stirrings of goodness elaborated into ways of living. These notes are beginnings, childhoods that should have swelled and receded into the teenage years they would now be living through.
Earlier this month, a memorial was quietly unveiled in Newtown, presumably to avoid the intense media coverage that has so beleaguered the town. A lone London plane tree stands in the center of a circular water feature, bounded by a stone basin etched with the names of the dead.
In winter, there are gold winterberries and evergreen hemlocks heavy with snow. In the spring, there will be dogwoods and foamflower. In summer, goldenrod and summersweet. In the fall, the lindens and silver maples will turn orange. From above, the memorial looks like the shell of a moon snail, whorled with flowers and trees.
How depraved it would be to see all of this and think: Life is short no matter what it is.
There were twenty children, none older than seven, and six adults. Now there is a ring of polished granite, a pool, and a tree.
A tree, then. A tree is a hope worth having. Who cannot imagine it? The branches widening, the trunk thickening, the wood bearing nourishment from root to crown. A thing so capacious and outlasting that small creatures might live within it and be sheltered. Find rest and refuge. And be safe, so safe, from harm.
ben tapeworm