Obama Disappoints Newtown Too — and the Massacre of Children Continues

The president is criticized for another unfulfilled promise: One year after the mass slaughter at the school, he has not managed to restrict the possession of arms. Now another 194 children are dead.

Barack and Michelle Obama observed a minute of silence and lit 26 candles during a simple ceremony in a small hall at the White House, one for each victim of the Newtown massacre. On Dec. 14, 2012, the small Connecticut town involuntarily became the stage for one of the most horrific massacres in American history. Twenty children and six adults from the Sandy Hook Elementary School were riddled with the bullets of Adam Lanza’s Bushmaster AR-15; another 20 or so were left mentally traumatized. The boy was in possession of an arsenal of rifles and pistols. The weapons had been legally acquired by his mother, a weapons and shooting range enthusiast who often took her son along with her to the latter.

That day, Barack Obama, reduced to tears, had sworn that things in America would change. But little can be seen to have changed; his crusade for greater arms control has failed. The statistics prove it and the most recent in the endless succession of episodes of bloodshed to shock the U.S. only confirms further that which the statistics have already proven. Last Friday, a student entered Arapahoe High School in Colorado, opening fire and injuring two classmates, one of whom is now in critical condition. His target seems to have been a teacher, but the aspiring murderer killed himself before the plan was brought to completion. This armed hold-up scene, played out one too many times in the U.S., was rendered still more dramatic — not only because it took place on the eve of the first anniversary of the Newtown massacre, but also because of its ghostly proximity to Aurora and Columbine, theaters of those other two child massacres of the armed Far West.*

Often it is children and teenagers who are the sacrificial offerings. According to data circulated by the news magazine Mother Jones, in the last year 194 minors under the age of 12 have been killed in firearm-related incidents. This has been not only at the hands of armed killers who were more or less improvising, but also because of pistols and rifles left unattended, as was the case for 2-year-old Taj Ayesh from Florida, who was killed while playing with his father’s pistol. One year on from Sandy Hook, despite public indignation and the president’s promises, 109 measures have been approved on paper by state authorities — but of these, 70 call for a loosening of controls while only 39 impose increased restrictions on the owners of firearms. Obama’s power has been shattered against a wall of obstructionism by a Congress that is both deeply split between Democrats and Republicans and suffering from deep divisions within these two camps. In the Senate, the lobby for arms freedom, which is bankrolled by the powerful National Rifle Association, has the upper hand, causing almost total paralysis.

Obama’s proposals called for the banning of all military-style assault weapons such as the one used by Lanza, the interdiction of the sale of super-magazines to private citizens and preventative controls on the purchasing of arms. But today, assault weapons are sold ever more freely in shops and supermarkets and legal quibbles frustrate any hope of restrictions on licensing. After the surge of emotion following the massacre a year ago, even public pressure has grown dim in the face of the country’s other problems. The opinion polls speak clearly: Only 52 percent of Americans want more severe rules to be placed on the circulation of weapons, compared to 61 percent recorded in February. In the face of institutional weakness, even the citizens of Newtown have decided not to host any kind of official ceremony for the 26 who lost their lives at Sandy Hook, but rather to mourn in the private silence of their own grief.

*Editor’s Note: The shooting in Aurora targeted a movie theater, not a school.