BY On Friday morning, a young gunman killed at least 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. He was found dead in one of the classrooms, though his cause of death is unknown. The motivation for the shooting is not clear yet, either. The incident is the worst school shooting in the United States since the incident at Virginia Tech in 2007 that left 32 people dead.
There have been a rash of shootinigs in 2012: In July, a man in Aurora, Colorado killed multiple people during a midnight screening of a Batman movie; in August a guman killed six people at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; and that same month, a man opened fire in front of the Empire State Building in New York City, killing two and injuring eight. Just last week a shooting at a mall in Portland, Oregon left two dead.
Many people have expressed their grief over the Newtown shooting via social media and the Web. Youth Radio has gathered a few of these reactions below.
President Obama addressed the nation Friday afternoon, tearing up occasionally during the speech: "The majority of those who died were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, and kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers, men and women, who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. So our hearts are broken today for the parents, grandparents, sisters, and brothers of these little children and for the families of the adults who were lost."
Other politicians reacted to the shooting via twitter. Rosa Delauro, a representative from Connecticut, was one of them:
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in #Newtown today.Terrible, senseless tragedy. #SandyHook #CTshooting
— Rosa DeLauro (@rosadelauro) December 14, 2012
Celebrities, like Zooey Deschanel, Mia Farrow, and Anderson Cooper also took to twitter to voice sympathy, under the hashtags #prayfornewton, #ctshooting, and #sandyhook.
I am filled with sadness in the wake of the sandy hook school tragedy. My thoughts and prayers are with all in Newtown, Connecticut.
— zooey deschanel (@ZooeyDeschanel) December 14, 2012
Gun control is no longer debatable- it's not a 'conversation'-It's a moral mandate. '
— mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) December 14, 2012
All our words seem so small, so meaningless in the face of such horror.
— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) December 14, 2012
Reporter and author, James Fallows, also wrote this piece for the Atlantic. Here's an excerpt:
Guns don't attack children; psychopaths and sadists do. But guns uniquely allow a psychopath to wreak death and devastation on such a large scale so quickly and easily. America is the only country in which this happens again -- and again and again. You can look it up.
Thousands of people die every year from gun violence, an unspeakable number at schools, and --we mourn and "move on." "Nothing to be done."
For parents, siblings, and families whose lives have been forever changed (or ended), deepest sympathies. For us as a nation .... I don't know what to say.