Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

"Another sign of the changing landscape came from the business world. On Tuesday, private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP said it would sell Freedom Group, four days after one of the gun makers rifles was used in the killings in which 27 people were murdered. The move by Cerberus to put Freedom Group on the block comes after stepped-up pressure from a public pension fund that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Cerberus. It suggests that certain investors – particularly large public pension funds and non-profit endowments – intend to use their financial heft to express their outrage over Fridays massacre."

"Last Friday, 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook School with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Much of the ensuing debate has focused on ways to regulate and potentially ban weapons like these. So, how many auto-loading rifles actually exist in America? In its 2011 report “The Militarization of the U.S. Civilian Firearms Market,” the non-partisan Violence Policy Center noted that “selling militarized firearms to civilians—i.e., weapons in the military inventory or weapons based on military designs—has been at the point of the industry’s civilian design and marketing strategy since the 1980s.” And in its 2011 annual report to investors, Smith & Wesson Holding Company noted that there was a $489 million domestic, non-military market for “modern sporting rifles,” a euphemism for auto-loading, assault-style rifles. Modern sporting rifles are perhaps the fastest-growing segment of the domestic long gun industry. From 2007 to 2011, according to the Freedom Group’s most recent annual report, domestic consumer long gun sales grew at a compound annual rate of 3 percent; modern sporting rifle sales grew at a 27 percent rate."

"I have sworn an oath to heal and to protect humans. Guns, invented to maim and destroy, are my natural enemy. Sally Cox, a school nurse in Newtown, told Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” that when state troopers led her out of the school after the mass shooting they instructed her to cover her eyes. This was humane, and right. But some of us see every day what no one should, ever. If the carnage remains undiscussed, we risk complacency about an American epidemic — one that is profoundly difficult, but necessary, to watch, and to confront. That is why I bear witness."

"Somehow they managed to make the N.R.A. the victims of the Newtown shootings. I think the average American would be shocked by their language."

"The AR-15 was the gun used by Adam Lanza when he opened fire in Newtown, Conn., last December. Twenty-six people were killed, including 20 first-graders. Everyone was shot more than once — as many as 11 times. And thats what the military wanted out of this gun — the ability to kill even without good aim, a weapon with high-capacity ammunition magazines that could spray bullets within close to medium range."

"One thing that we have been doing here is really trying to keep our focus on the lives lost and the lives of the people here who died led, the heroes who saved lives, who stopped even more bloodshed, and often put themselves in harms way to do it, the teachers and the school administrators. We have avoided focusing on the killer, because he is gone, and, frankly, we dont want him to be remembered, certainly not by name. We tried to be careful and respectful of what the families here are going through, and we will continue to do that."