The Day Hell Came to School
Teri Schure
Hell came to school on 12/14/12.
Five years ago today, a 20-year-old stormed into the Sandy Hook Elementary School and massacred 20 first graders and six adults in a frenzy of gunfire.
The killer used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle to slaughter the students and six educators. It took him less than five minutes. All but two of his victims were shot multiple times.
On what should have been a routine December school day, twenty 6 and 7-year old children said goodbye to their families and never came home.
Every year on this day, I make a donation to Sandy Hook Promise, a national non-profit organization founded and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed on that hellish day.
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Opinion by Nicole Hockley
Nicole Hockley and her son, Dylan, who was killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Nicole Hockley is co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, and the mother of Dylan, who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. The views expressed here are her own. View more opinion on CNN. (CNN)For a few days, the news focuses on coverage of whatever the most recent shooting is and the devastation it caused the families and communities. But like with most horrific stories, the majority of people will move on with their lives, unaware (or disbelieving) that the same violence could happen in their own community and in so many communities every single day.
Eight years ago, Mark Barden stood in the White House Rose Garden to make a plea for action on gun violence.
That day, the U.S. Senate had rejected a proposal to expand background checks for firearm purchases. Four months earlier, Barden had lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
âWe return home with the determination that change will happen â maybe not today, but it will happen,â Barden said at the 2013 news conference, flanked by his family, then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Today, Barden still is fighting that fight.