Sandy Hook and Congress
Jan 3, 2013, 8:27 AM | Updated: 11:33 am
Sandy Hook Elementary was back in session Thursday, seven miles from the original school in Newtown, in a building re-made to look like old one.
Photos: Sandy Hook students return to school
“Everything is in order, where it should be,” described one of the parents. “The desks are there, even down to the teacher’s tic-tacs in the right spot. So they’ve done a great job.”
There will be no special assembly and no one will bring up the massacre unless a child brings it up. The idea is to move on.
The big question now is whether the new Congress, which is also back in session Thursday, will want to bring it up.
The latest polling shows 49 percent of Americans say that it’s more important to control gun ownership than to protect the rights of gun owners, and there’s that celebrity gun control PSA, featuring Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz and other A-listers.
So the pressure is on. But so far, the only pro-gun members of Congress who appear willing to change their minds and support gun regulation are a handful of pro-gun Democrats.
And that celebrity ad has already turned up on YouTube as a mashup that intercuts those same celebrities with their most violent on-screen gun scenes.
It ends with Conan O’Brien saying, “enough,” then a clip of him firing a machine gun on his show.
If you thought what happened at Newtown would make gun regulation a slam dunk: maybe not.
By the way, the new Sandy Hook Elementary is being protected by what reporters describe as a large number of police, just as the NRA has recommended.