In the shadow of the gun

Sandy Hook Elementary School has been completely demolished — but one year after the shootings, Americans are as obsessed as ever with guns, says Suzanne Harrington.

IT WILL be the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on Dec 14. By the time of that date, the school will have been completely demolished — the bricks crushed, the steel melted down, so that grisly souvenirs don’t end up on eBay, as did bits of Twin Tower brickwork.

A new school will be built on the place where the old one stood, which is designed to signal that life in Sandy Hook is going forward, moving on. Along with the school, the lives of 26 families were demolished last December in the Connecticut town when 20 small children were murdered by a 20-year-old man with his mother’s assault rifle. Adam Lanza also killed six adult women, including his mother, before killing himself.