Newtown, Connecticut - President Barack Obama embraced
grief-stricken families of young children massacred in their school
during a moving vigil Sunday coinciding with rising demands for action
on gun control.
Obama arrived in dark and chill
Newtown, scene of Friday's carnage in which 20 children, aged six or
seven and six adults died, and spent several hours privately consoling
relatives of those murdered, and first responders.
Earlier, officials formally identified Adam Lanza, 20, as the shooter
who ran amok in the picture postcard town and confirmed that he shot his
mother several times in the head at the house they shared before going
to his old school and embarking on a gruesome killing spree.
Queues stretched for at least 200 yards (meters) outside the auditorium
at Newtown High School, where Obama was to attend a vigil later on
Sunday evening and give an address.
Adults stood
in groups, some crying and hugging, others joining younger children,
many of elementary school age, in carrying teddies and cuddly toys as
symbols of remembrance for young innocent lives ending in a hail of
bullets.
Obama, representing a nation plunged
into deep shock by the tragedy, was to speak at the end of the vigil, in
a hauntingly familiar scene, consoling the bereaved from the fourth gun
massacre of his presidency.
Lanza used his
mother's Bushmaster .223 assault rifle to kill 26 people at the school,
including 20 children aged either six or seven, before taking his own
life with a handgun as police officers closed in and sirens wailed.
During his rampage, the shooter had four guns and multiple magazines,
some holding up to 30 clips, but Connecticut State Police spokesman
Lieutenant Paul Vance said it was unclear how many bullets were fired.
Connecticut's Chief Medical Examiner Wayne Carver has said that the
bodies of the child victims were riddled with as many as 11 bullets.
Vance declined to hint at any possible motive they may have uncovered
so far in their investigation, saying: "We don't have a specific reason
we can stand here and say this occurred."
Grief
mixed with new calls Sunday for action with the re-elected Obama under
rising pressure to lead a charge to renew a ban on assault weapons and
fast firing ammunition, and to take on the power of the US gun lobby.
A prominent Democratic lawmaker, Senator Dianne Feinstein of
California, promised to introduce a bill to ban assault weapons on the
very first day of the next Congress, January 3.
As he waited for the vigil to start in Newtown, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman called for a national commission on violence.
"These events are happening more frequently, and I worry that if we
don't take a thoughtful look at them, we lose the hurt and the anger
that we have now."
In ways big and small,
tributes were paid -- from candles lit and teddy bears left at the
elementary school crime scene, to gestures at the cavernous football
stadiums that usually fixate Americans' attention on Sundays.
Before the day's games around the country, the National Football League
had teams observe a minute's silence in memory of those killed.
Back in Newtown, nerves remained on edge. One Catholic church where
people attended services -- Saint Rose of Lima -- was evacuated due to
an undisclosed threat. Armed police searched a house next door.
Townsfolk poured into churches to pray and seek solace over the
unimaginable -- a gunman pumping shot after shot into small children
with a rifle of the kind used in wars.
The town
Christmas tree became an impromptu place of remembrance, with people
pausing every few minutes to pray and cross themselves under a light
snowfall.
One middle-aged woman knelt down in
front of the ranks of votive candles, teddy bears and handwritten notes,
and bowed her head in tears.
"The community is gathering together and praying," Red Cross volunteer Rosty Slabicky told AFP.
"They are destroyed... Not just the families, but the first responders
are dealing with the crisis on a very personal and emotional level."
The investigation entered a new stage with the autopsy of Lanza, seen
as a withdrawn and awkward youngster who had shown no signs of violence,
let alone any indications that he might perpetrate a massacre.
Lanza's main weapon was the Bushmaster, a civilian version of the US
military's M4 -- legally registered to his mother. Police said he had
three other weapons with him, two pistols and a shotgun found in a car.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy revealed that Lanza blasted his way
into the school, which had just installed a new security door where
visitors could be viewed by video camera and buzzed in.
"He shot his way into the building. He penetrated the building by
literally shooting an entrance into the building. That's what an assault
weapon can do for you," Malloy said on CNN.
Many states, including Connecticut, already have strict laws on the
purchase of firearms, but with no federal statutes, there is little to
stop the traffic of guns from other states where fewer restrictions
apply.
An assault weapon ban was passed in 1994
under president Bill Clinton but it expired in 2004 and was never
resurrected. Obama supported restoring the law while running for
president in 2008 but did not make it a priority during his first term.
"We have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more
tragedies like this," Obama said in his weekly radio address on
Saturday. "Regardless of the politics."
However,
with gun ownership protected by the constitution and firearms popular
among a broad base of Americans, especially conservative Republicans,
gun bans have long been seen as a vote-losing proposition.
Newtown was the second deadliest school shooting in US history after
the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 in which South Korean student
Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others before
taking his own life.
In the most notorious
recent incident, a 24-year-old, James Holmes, allegedly killed 12 people
and wounded 58 others when he opened fire at a midnight screening of
the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in July. — AFP
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