“
Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people
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”
Stephen King (Guns)
“
Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns -- or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun.
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Quentin R. Bufogle
“
There is nothing sane, merciful, heroic, devout, redemptive, wise, holy, loving, peaceful, joyous, righteous, gracious, remotely spiritual, or worthy of praise where mass murder is concerned. We have been in this world long enough to know that by now and to understand that nonviolent conflict resolution informed by mutual compassion is the far better option.
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Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
“
On one DR trip you drive up to La Vega and put her name out there. You show a picture, too, like a private eye. It is of the two of you, the one time you went to the beach, to Sandy Hook. Both of you are smiling. Both of you blinked.
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Junot Díaz
“
I decided to write Parabellum because I was personally baffled by the frequency of mass shootings in the United States. The Sandy Hook school shooting was the once that really got the wheels turning. I just couldn't understand why anyone would do such a thing, and I felt compelled to grapple with all the issues at play.
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Greg Hickey (Parabellum)
“
Richard Grenier coined a lasting definition of conspiracy theories as “the sophistication of the ignorant.
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Elizabeth Williamson (Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth)
“
SHAPIRO: This is astonishing. MORGAN: What’s astonishing? SHAPIRO: What’s astonishing about it is for weeks now, you have been saying that anybody who disagrees with your position is absurd, idiotic, and doesn’t care about the dead kids in Sandy Hook. And then when I say that it’s a bullying tactic, you turn around and that say I’m bullying you for saying that. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous.
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Ben Shapiro (How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument)
“
Ladies and gentlemen, after Columbine, Newtown, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, San Bernardino, Orlando, Vegas, Parkland and now in our own community, one thing should be clear to citizens and politicians alike. Our society needs stricter laws for people who purchase guns for the purpose of perpetrating criminal acts. We need tougher laws for people who buy guns to sell to criminals or kids. These laws should severely punish anyone in these categories—neither suggestion steps on the Second Amendment . . .
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Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
See, one of the better arguments is, “Well, if you take the guns away, then only the criminals will have guns.” Not true. When they banned the guns in Australia, it worked. When they banned them in Britain, it worked, okay? The Bushmaster gun that the kid was gonna use in Sandy Hook costs, like, $1,000 American and you can buy it in Walmart. It’ll be delivered to your house. That’s it, man. 1,000 bucks, right? That same gun in Australia on the black market costs $34,000. Now if you have $34,000, you don’t need to be a criminal. You’ve got $34,000. You’re a great little saver. Keep going. So that covers the criminals, but that doesn’t cover the people who wanna murder your family, that are coming after you and your family. It kind of does. The people who do the massacres, it covers them ’cause they go… The kid at Colorado who thought he was The Joker, let’s say that he had some social issues. The kid at Sandy Hook was Asperger’s as fuck. Right? I don’t know if you know a lot about the black market, but you can’t just rock up at the docks going, [Slurring speech] “Guns! Who wants to sell me a gun?
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Jim Jefferies
“
And what I’m realizing is that when he doesn’t intervene, it doesn’t mean he isn’t there. I think it means just the opposite. He decided not to just sweep down and fix our problems every time something goes wrong. Instead he chose to redeem us eternally by sending his Son.” Tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Sandy Hook flipped through Garrett’s mind. The reality of a fallen world was clear. And yet like Jordan said, wasn’t God’s plan really a plan of redemption? Yes, he believed that God was capable of fixing our problems, but he chose instead to rescue and redeem humankind permanently. “Maybe,” he said, trying to put his thoughts into words, “there isn’t
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Lisa Harris (Vanishing Point (The Nikki Boyd Files, #4))
“
It was December 15, 2012, the day after twenty-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I remember thinking, Maybe if all the mothers in the world crawled on their hands and knees toward those parents in Newtown, we could take some of the pain away. We could spread their pain across all of our hearts. I would do it. Can’t we find a way to hold some of it for them? I’ll take my share. Even if it adds sadness to all my days. My friends and I didn’t rush to start a fund that day. We didn’t storm the principal’s office at our kids’ school asking for increased security measures. We didn’t call politicians or post on Facebook. We would do all that in the days to come. But the day right after the shooting, we just sat together with nothing but the sound of occasional weeping cutting through the silence. Leaning in to our shared pain and fear comforted us. Being alone in the midst of a widely reported trauma, watching endless hours of twenty-four-hour news or reading countless articles on the Internet, is the quickest way for anxiety and fear to tiptoe into your heart and plant their roots of secondary trauma. That day after the mass killing, I chose to cry with my friends, then I headed to church to cry with strangers. I couldn’t have known then that in 2017 I would speak at a fund-raiser for the Resiliency Center of Newtown and spend time sitting with a group of parents whose children were killed at Sandy Hook. What I’ve learned through my work and what I heard that night in Newtown makes one thing clear: Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hurt people and reinforce their own isolation. I have started to believe that crying with strangers in person could save the world. Today there’s a sign that welcomes you to Newtown: WE ARE SANDY HOOK. WE CHOOSE LOVE. That day when I sat in a room with other mothers from my neighborhood and cried, I wasn’t sure what we were doing or why. Today I’m pretty sure we were choosing love in our own small way.
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Brené Brown (Braving the Wilderness: Reese's Book Club: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone)
“
CNN and The New York Times are called fake news by some people on our side, while the president personally thanks infowars.com and its founder Alex Jones for “standing up for the values that makes this country great.” Jones, it must be noted, has rarely met a bizarre conspiracy that he didn’t fully embrace and is one of the most egregious polluters of civil discourse in America. He believes, for instance, that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government and that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, in which twenty first-graders were killed, was a hoax staged by the government as a pretext to confiscate our guns. Those grieving parents that we all saw were—according to Jones—paid actors. It was disheartening to learn that in the days immediately following his election, as President-Elect Trump was receiving the well wishes of world leaders, he also took time to place a call to this man to let him know how important his support had been to the success of his campaign. Giving away one’s agency and becoming captive to such outlandish and vile alternative facts would be bad enough were one an average person, quietly living his or her life. But giving away one’s agency to such a confusion of fact and fantasy when one has power—well, that is truly dangerous.
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Jeff Flake (Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle)
“
The world recoiled in horror in 2012 when 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. . . . The weapon was a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adapted from its original role as a battlefield weapon. The AR-15, which is designed to inflict maximum casualties with rapid bursts, should never have been available for purchase by civilians (emphasis added).1 —New York Times editorial, March 4, 2016 Assault weapons were banned for 10 years until Congress, in bipartisan obeisance to the gun lobby, let the law lapse in 2004. As a result, gun manufacturers have been allowed to sell all manner of war weaponry to civilians, including the super destructive .50-caliber sniper rifle. . . .(emphasis added)2 —New York Times editorial, December 11, 2015 [James Holmes the Aurora, Colorado Batman Movie Theater Shooter] also bought bulletproof vests and other tactical gear” (emphasis added).3 —New York Times, July 22, 2012 It is hard to debate guns if you don’t know much about the subject. But it is probably not too surprising that gun control advocates who live in New York City know very little about guns. Semi-automatic guns don’t fire “rapid bursts” of bullets. The New York Times might be fearful of .50-caliber sniper rifles, but these bolt-action .50-caliber rifles were never covered by the federal assault weapons ban. “Urban assault vests” may sound like they are bulletproof, but they are made of nylon. These are just a few of the many errors that the New York Times made.4 If it really believes that it has a strong case, it wouldn’t feel the need to constantly hype its claims. What distinguishes the New York Times is that it doesn’t bother running corrections for these errors.
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John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
“
From page 90. This book was produced prior to the elementary school shootings in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, which pushed hi-cap magazine prices much higher.
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Patrick Sweeney (Glock Deconstructed)
“
I think we can have a rational, political conversation about balancing rights and risks and rewards of all of these different policies, but I don’t think that what we need to do is demonize people on the other side as being unfeeling about what happened at Sandy Hook.
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Ben Shapiro (How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument)
“
Fact #2: The prosecution of gun crimes under the Obama administration had dropped [30] percent. Whereas the Bush administration had made going after violent criminals who use guns a top priority, the Obama administration put far less emphasis on doing so. And the data demonstrate the consequences. Fact #3: President Obama reduced the funding for school safety by more than $300 million. That school safety funding might well have gone to providing security to prevent the crazed gunman at Sandy Hook from taking the lives of those little children. But the Obama administration had other priorities.
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Ted Cruz (A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America)
“
Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.
It’s that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides.
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Sandy Vaile
“
And it’s because of the Sandy Hook parents, the Mothers of the Movement, Gabby and Mark, and so many other incredibly brave survivors and family members that I know in my heart that one day we will stem the tide and save lives.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
“
And then there were terrible things, like Alex’s assertion that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children was “completely fake … they clearly used actors.” Inspired by claims like this, Sandy Hook “truthers” had begun bombarding the parents of the murdered children with messages like: “You’re a fraud and an asshole. Rot in hell you fucking prick.” (That one had been sent to Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, died in the shooting.)
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Jon Ronson (The Elephant in the Room)
“
Alex said this about Sandy Hook in January 2015: “Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are — that they clearly used actors.
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Jon Ronson (The Elephant in the Room)
“
The USA is no longer the home of free speech.
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Steven Magee
“
Free speech is a fond memory of the past in the USA.
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Steven Magee
“
Most of the time, I’m kind of numb,” she replied. “You know, I think every mom out there can relate to the fact of how long it takes to create a baby, those nine months that you watch every ultrasound and every heartbeat. And it takes nine months to create a human being, and it takes seconds for an AR-15 to take that away from the surface of this Earth. And it wasn’t just my son. It was 25 other souls that left this Earth that day because that weapon fell into the hands of a tormented soul. And that haunts me.
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Elizabeth Williamson (Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth)
“
Which is to say that by the time I found him, he’d been briefed in detail on the graphic, horrid crime scene at Sandy Hook. He’d heard about blood pooled on the floors of classrooms and the bodies of twenty first graders and six educators torn apart by a semiautomatic rifle. His shock and grief would never compare with that of the first responders who’d rushed in to secure the building and evacuate survivors from the carnage. It was nothing next to that of the parents who endured an interminable wait in the chilly air outside the building, praying that they’d see their child’s face again. And it was nothing at all next to those whose wait would be in vain.
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
As he saw it, it was part of his responsibility, what he’d been elected to do—to look rather than look away, to stay upright when the rest of us felt ready to fall down. Which is to say that by the time I found him, he’d been briefed in detail on the graphic, horrid crime scene at Sandy Hook. He’d heard about blood pooled on the floors of classrooms and the bodies of twenty first graders and six educators torn apart by a semiautomatic rifle. His shock and grief would never compare with that of the first responders who’d rushed in to secure the building and evacuate survivors from the carnage. It was nothing next to that of the parents who endured an interminable wait in the chilly air outside the building, praying that they’d see their child’s face again. And it was nothing at all next to those whose wait would be in vain.
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
Part of the answer is that Sandy Hook was a single event. The murders in Chicago are more of a steady background noise. We’re constituted so that novel and unusual events catch our attention and trigger our emotional responses.
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Paul Bloom (Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion)
“
By simply threatening a filibuster, Republicans could kill popular legislation, even a gun safety law for background checks before gun purchases that had been introduced after the massacre of twenty-six people, including twenty small children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Although 90 percent of Americans supported the bill, forty-five senators, representing just 38 percent of the American people, killed it.[10]
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Heather Cox Richardson (Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America)
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In total, as of this writing in October 2015, there have been 972 mass shootings since the Sandy Hook murders, resulting in at least 1,217 people dead and 3,509 wounded.
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Bill Press (Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down)
“
Suspense doesn’t always have to be about physical danger. Making the reader worry is a universal concept that can be applied to any story.
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Sandy Vaile
“
The brig Henrietta having made Sandy Hook a little before the dinner hour – and having passed the Narrows about three o’clock – and then crawling to and fro, in a series of tacks infinitesimal enough to rival the calculus, across the grey sheet of the harbour of New-York – until it seemed to Mr Smith, dancing from foot to foot upon deck, that the small mound of the city waiting there would hover ahead in the November gloom in perpetuity, never growing closer, to the smirk of Greek Zeno – and the day being advanced to dusk by the time Henrietta at last lay anchored off Tietjes Slip, with the veritable gables of the city’s veritable houses divided from him only by one hundred foot of water – and the dusk moreover being as cold and damp and dim as November can afford, as if all the world were a quarto of grey paper dampened by drizzle until in danger of crumbling imminently to pap: – all this being true, the master of the brig pressed upon him the virtue of sleeping this one further night aboard, and pursuing his shore business in the morning. (He meaning by the offer to signal his esteem, having found Mr Smith a pleasant companion during the slow weeks of the crossing.) But Smith would not have it. Smith,
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Francis Spufford (Golden Hill)
“
She gave Cooper a quick nod, indicating she was going out the back, and didn’t wait around to see if he understood her meaning. She pushed through the swinging doors to the small kitchen in the back, snagged the keys to her truck from the hook, and replaced them with her apron. She gave a quick glance to the grill, making sure Sandy hadn’t left anything to burn on it when he’d been pulled out front, but everything looked in order. Stop stalling.
She sighed, shook her head, but the rueful smile that accompanied the movement was fleeting. For what might be the first time in her life, she had absolutely no idea how she was going to handle what came next.
“Only one way to find out,” she murmured. Tightening her grip on her keys, if not her emotions, she let herself out the back door of the pub and found herself staring straight up into the crystalline blue eyes of Cooper Jax.
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Donna Kauffman (Starfish Moon (Brides of Blueberry Cove, #3))
“
The Columbia Journalism Review analyzed the news outlets most frequently shared by supporters of Trump and Clinton. Fans of both candidates demonstrated a proclivity for outlets supporting their political biases, but the differences between the two camps were stark. On social media, Clinton supporters shared the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and New York Times the most. Trump supporters far and away preferred Breitbart, the Hill, and Fox News. Further down the list, Clinton supporters gravitated to a wide range of liberal outlets, most fairly well known. Trump’s camp, though, included a long list of lesser-known outlets, including the controversial Infowars, a media organization known for denying the occurrence of the Sandy Hook shootings and one I’d witnessed routinely regurgitating Russian propaganda.
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Clint Watts (Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News)
“
This is Alex Jones, after all. The human ass-pimple best known for defaming and harassing the mourning parents whose innocent little children had just been executed by a monster at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
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Tim Miller (Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell)
“
Yet the New York arrival time was not measured by when the liner docked but by when it passed the Ambrose Lightship, a navigation beacon moored off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where it marked the main channel into New York harbor. On her maiden voyage the Olympic had passed the Ambrose Lightship at 2:24 a.m. on Wednesday, June 21, 1911. Ismay knew that to beat the Olympic’s maiden crossing record and “arrive on Tuesday,” the Titanic had simply to pass the Ambrose Lightship before midnight and best her sister’s time by only two and a half hours. On her second westbound crossing, the Olympic had, in fact, reached the lightship at 10:08 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18. With the Titanic already achieving average speeds of just under twenty-two knots over the last two days, she was well on her way to making the Tuesday arrival that Ismay had so enthusiastically predicted.
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Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
“
All Yang’s men were in by midday and our party straggled in later completely done in. Chuen came in first. He was wearing a dark green commando’s beret, long green canvas boots with rubber soles – American jungle boots – and green battle-dress with lovely blue parachute wings over his left pocket. He is a little cheerful man and speaks fair English. Then came Humpleman, very young, blue-eyed, with a bland and serious manner; then Jim Hannah, lean, dark, hook-nosed, moustached, and over forty. At one time he was a journalist and in the rubber slump in Malaya he worked in Australia. Then came Harrison, short, with red face and sandy hair – a very silent Scot, also a planter. John and Richard brought up the rear, absolutely exhausted but very contented. After a meal they had got out on to the field and had everything ready an hour before midnight. Then they waited and waited and, as nothing happened, they got more and more worried and despondent. One hour late, then two hours. It was bitterly cold, and at last they were just talking of returning home when a faint drone was heard from the west. They were so excited that their hearts almost choked them! At last the Lib came over. Apparently she followed up the Perak river, then came across on a bearing. The moon was shining brilliantly and the sky was covered with high, white, fleecy clouds. The fires, freshly stoked with dry atap, burned up brightly, and Quayle with his torch flashed the recognition letter faster and faster with growing excitement as the great Lib, after flying round in a wide circle, swooped overhead, vast and glistening in the moonlight. Suddenly four little white balls seemed to appear in the plane’s wake, and four tiny black forms were seen swinging from side to side below them. John, Richard, and Frank all agreed it was the most exciting moment of their lives. While they were still lost in wonder, things started happening. Hannah and Harrison landed beautifully and were immediately fielded, but Humpleman fell in the stream and was retrieved soaking wet. The containers and packages, which had been released immediately after the bodies, now came down and all landed
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F. Spencer Chapman (The Jungle is Neutral: The Epic True Story of One Man’s War Behind Enemy Lines)
“
In the years since April 20, 1999, when the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve of their classmates and one teacher, the country has been plagued by a string of these enormities, among them the massacres at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (which claimed thirty-two and seventeen lives, respectively). Though there is no gauging the relative awfulness of these crimes, the December 14, 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was particularly devastating, largely because of the age of the victims: twenty first-grade students (along with six adult staff members) were shot to death by Adam Lanza, a profoundly disturbed twenty-year-old misfit with a generalized abhorrence of humankind, an obsession with serial murder, and a gun-loving mother who encouraged his interest in high-powered weaponry (and was the first to die at his hands). The impact of this horror on the country at large was summed up in the next day’s New York Times: “Nation reels after gunman massacres 20 children at school in Connecticut.
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Harold Schechter (Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer)
“
People shoud try to treasure each other more. Because life eventually disposes of everyone, and you don't know when it's going to happen. So make coffee for your partner, tuck your children into bed. If God forbid that was the last time, you would have that to remember.
Sometimes I'm so tired, I have to force myself to do that. To do that extra thing. But then I'm like, 'Remember.
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Veronique Haller
“
You know, if I asked everybody in this world who has ever loved someone, who has ever had a human being in their life who was essential to their well-being to raise their hand, I don't think there would be many hands down in this world. And every one of those hands is a reason why those weapons should not be out in the general public.
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Veronique Haller
“
People being shot is the way we mark the passage of time now. Like, where were you when Sandy Hook happened?
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Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
Dean King (Titanic...The Sinking of the Unsinkable: The Terrible Truth Behind the Tragedy that Shocked the World)
“
If there was one thing Snake knew about people, it was that once they got attached to a theory, it was hard to get them detached. They’d screen out unhelpful facts, invent favorable ones, and ignore contradictions in their own claims. Look at those Sandy Hook truthers, babbling about false flags and crisis actors and all the rest. When people were motivated enough to believe something, they were going to believe it no matter what. There was no such thing as a bridge too far.
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Barry Eisler (All the Devils (Livia Lone #4))
“
When anybody’s behind a machine, whether it’s a gun or a computer or a car, a dehumanization takes place that makes it easier to commit an act of violence,
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Elizabeth Williamson (Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth)
“
The murder-suicide combination of school and other mass shootings is largely young white boys’ way of driving off the cliff at the end of mental health’s tortuous road. Consider three of the most notorious white male shooters: Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook), Elliott Rodgers (UC Santa Barbara), and Dylann Roof (Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston).
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Warren Farrell (The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It)
“
After Sandy Hook, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to make sure all agencies were following the Republican-passed law.9 In response, the Social Security Administration adopted a rule to report to the background check system certain people who were receiving disability benefits because of mental disorders. That covered an estimated seventy-five thousand mental patients. But in February 2017, the House and Senate passed bills to reverse the Social Security Administration’s rule.10 President Trump signed into law the restoration of firearm eligibility to those who are so mentally ill that they are considered by the government to be disabled.
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)
“
Well, we are certainly experiencing a heyday for irrational discourse and 'alternate facts.' Donald Trump, Alex Jones, Devin Nunes, Ann Coulter, Dinexh D'Souza, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Rush Limbaugh, and the entire Republican congressional caucus inhabit a world in which down is up, up is down, and science is fake news. It is hard for some people to have faith in American institutions when they are being told every day that climate change is a hoax, that Obama is a Kenyan, that the United States government brought down the Twin Towers, that the grieving parents of murdered Sandy Hook kindergartners are "crisis actors," and that Hillary Clinton is splitting time cooking up uranium deals with the Russians and running a child-sex ring out of a pizzeria. Not to mention every word that tumbles from Donald Trump's lying mouth.
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Bob Garfield (American Manifesto: Saving Democracy From Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves)
“
Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden founded Sandy Hook Promise to train teachers and students to recognize those who are on a pathway to violence. Hockley got the idea after an FBI official explained to the families that the Sandy Hook gunman was showing signs that are common to many mass murderers.
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)
“
Sandy Hook Promise program called “Start with Hello” teaches students to reach out to peers who are ignored or bullied. Another, titled “Say Something,” trains teachers and students to speak up when they see warning signs.
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)
“
Without legislation from Congress, President Obama signed several orders to restrict gun sales to ineligible buyers. One of his presidential memorandums built on a law signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. That law required federal agencies to report ineligible persons to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.8 After Sandy Hook, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to make sure all agencies were following the Republican-passed law.9 In response, the Social Security Administration adopted a rule to report to the background check system certain people who were receiving disability benefits because of mental disorders. That covered an estimated seventy-five thousand mental patients. But in February 2017, the House and Senate passed bills to reverse the Social Security Administration’s rule.10 President Trump signed into law the restoration of firearm eligibility to those who are so mentally ill that they are considered by the government to be disabled.
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)
“
Please note that the Gallup-documented changes in trust did not flow from the verifiable truth or falsity of the content. In the bubble, facts are no match for belief. There is no Democrat Party child-sex ring being operated out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, and never was. There is no fleet of UN black helicopters poised to invade the capitals of the world and steal their sovereignty, and never was. There was no U.S. military operation under the Obama administration to overthrow Texas and jail patriots in a vacant Walmart (I’m pretty sure we already have Texas, don’t we?). There was no George W. Bush administration plot to blow up the Twin Towers on 9/11 as a false-flag operation. There was no fake moon landing. Baby Barack Obama was born in a Honolulu, Hawaii, hospital, just as the birth certificate and contemporaneous newspaper announcements said. And at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, having already shot his own mother to death, Adam Lanza murdered twenty children and six adults. It was not a hoax. No matter what that asshole Alex Jones or his addled followers believe, the victims’ grieving parents were not “crisis actors” in a plot to undermine the Second Amendment. It was a fucking massacre conducted with a fucking assault rifle such as the fucking NRA has fought for decades to be readily available.
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Bob Garfield (American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves)
“
police were not protected, but Cerberus, whose gun company makes the semi-automatic assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook school massacre, was.
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Steven Brill (Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall–and Those Fighting to Reverse It)
“
Following the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, the Florida Legislature proposed providing the Broward County school district with an additional $55 million for school safety.4 But, according to the Sun Sentinel, Superintendent Runcie and the school board “hated the idea because control over the money would have gone to a separate taxing district board.” School board member Ann Murray declared, “I’m not willing to give up any authority to anyone.” Her colleague Robin Bartleman worried that the state money could interfere with the soon-to-be-launched PROMISE program. Superintendent Runcie wrote a letter to the legislature saying that he didn’t want the additional money and explaining that he was already moving ahead on a host of school safety initiatives (which he never implemented).5 A
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Andrew Pollack (Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America's Students)
“
If there was one thing Snake knew about people, it was that once they got attached to a theory, it was hard to get them detached. They’d screen out unhelpful facts, invent favorable ones, and ignore contradictions in their own claims. Look at those Sandy Hook truthers, babbling about false flags and crisis actors and all the rest. When people were motivated enough to believe something, they were going to believe it no matter what.
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Barry Eisler (All the Devils (Livia Lone #4))
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In Australia, we had guns, right? Right up until 1996. In 1996, Australia had the biggest massacre on Earth. It still hasn’t been beaten. And… Now, after that, they banned the guns. Now, in the 10 years before Port Arthur, there was 10 massacres. Since the gun ban in 1996, there hasn’t been a single massacre since. I don’t know how or why this happened, uh… Maybe it was a coincidence, right? Now, please understand that I understand that Australia and America are two vastly different cultures with different people, right? I get it. In Australia, we had the biggest massacre on Earth, and the Australian government went, “That’s it! No more guns!” And we all went, “Yeah, all right, then. That seems fair enough, really.” Now, in America, you had the Sandy Hook massacre where little, tiny children died, and your government went, “Maybe… we’ll get rid of the big guns?” And 50% of you went, “Fuck you! Don’t take my guns!
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Jim Jefferies
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I find the NRA to be hard work. The fact that they always think the answer is more guns. After Sandy Hook happened, the NRA said, and I quote, “None of this would have happened if the teachers had guns.” I… I think they’re forgetting what school was like. Does anyone remember that casual teacher that used to… Whenever she came into school, that relief teacher came, you and your friends would see her and go, [Chuckling] “Oh, we’re gonna make her cry.” And then she’d stand in front of the class with a bit of chalk and her hands would be shaking, and you’d go, “You’re never getting married, are you, Miss? Never gonna happen for you.” Then she’d get back to her 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, and she’d be crying over the steering wheel, just, “Why don’t they like me?” Let’s give that cunt a gun and see how things work out! [Audience cheering] And then they go, “Oh, well, answer to that, we’ll just add more guns.” They go, “We’ll put an armed security guard at every school across America.” Yeah, that’ll work out. The average security guard in America earns $16 an hour. Not a lot of wiggle room to be a fucking hero! Someone comes onto the school and… [Mimicking machine gun] And you’ve got Kevin. Now, I’m sure Kevin’s shit-hot at Call of Duty, but it might not fucking cut it, ladies and gentlemen.
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Jim Jefferies