Jean Decety, a professor in psychology and psychiatry who specializes in developmental neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and social neuroscience, says that his research indicates that psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological hardwiring that enables them to feel empathy for others. Decety led a study involving eighty prisoners between the ages of eighteen and fifty at a correctional facility. The criminals were tested for levels of psychopathy using standard measures, then studied with functional MRI technology to determine their responses to a series of scenarios depicting people being intentionally hurt and short videos of facial expressions showing pain.
The study showed that psychopaths processed empathy, especially in response to the perception of other people in distress, differently than other people.
Regardless of the cause, there is a feeling among some experts that while violent crime as a whole has been going down, these random mass shootings may be a rising trend. “Over the past twenty-five years we have seen an increase in these kind of gratuitous glory killings, where the shooter wants to kill as many strangers as possible. When you start looking at the motivations, that is a phenomenon we have not seen before and the question is if this is not decreasing will it increase in the years to come?” said O’Toole.
CHAPTER 19
THE NEWTOWN EFFECT
On the morning of February 27, Neil Heslin sat down at the end of a long table, a box of tissues within arm’s reach, and began to give his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Hearing in an eleventh-hour bid to win congressional support for an assault weapons ban. His hands gripped a large portrait of his son, Jesse, a first-grader who was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. The grieving father began by telling lawmakers the story of the day he lost his “best friend,” part of his emotional plea for lawmakers to act and pass legislation that would ban sales of the types of firearms that had ended the life of his son just ten weeks earlier.
“My name is Neil Heslin. Jesse Lewis was my son. He was a boy who loved life and lived it to the fullest. He was my best friend. On December 14, he lost his life at Sandy Hook Elementary because of a gun that nobody needs and nobody should have a right to have. I’m here to tell his story. I know what I am doing here today won’t bring my son back, but I hope that maybe if you listen to what I say today and you do something about it—maybe nobody else will have to experience what I have experienced.”
As he continued, a group of Newtown families and residents sitting behind him wiped away tears. Some broke out into sobs.
“Some guns just don’t have any place in the hands of civilians. The assault weapons we’re talking about today, their sole purpose is to put a lot of lead out in a battlefield quickly. That’s what they do. That’s what they did at Sandy Hook Elementary. That wasn’t a killing; it was a massacre. Those guns and those clips let Adam Lanza massacre those kids. And my son was one of them.”
Heslin asked the crowd made up of legislators and law enforcement professionals if anyone could explain to him the need for military-style weapons in the home.
“Second Amendment shall not be infringed!” a gun-rights supporter shouted out, breaking the stillness in the room. “Shall not infringe on our rights.”
The man was quickly silenced and escorted out of the building, but his message had been heard by everyone. The battle over gun control would be one fought passionately on both sides of the political spectrum.
Only two and a half months had passed since twenty children and six educators were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary, but in that short amount of time, many of the families had unified around a single issue: reforming the nation’s gun laws.
Those grieving over their lost loved ones found themselves with a unique moral authority, admired by a nation that both shared in their grief and was captivated by their tragic stories. In their search to harness the heartache in a way they hoped might prevent future tragedies, they formed Sandy Hook Promise. It began as a small grassroots effort to push for changes in current gun laws as well as reforms in the mental health system and quickly morphed into an organization with a national stage.
The group of fifteen families joined local activists and a handful of key figures in the Democratic Party who all had the mutual goal of reforming gun laws. It was aligned with democratic strategist Ricki Seidman, who had formerly served as Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director during the 2008 general election. Seidman went to work helping the families strategize. All media requests were funneled through Lara Bergthold, a veteran Democratic operative now with Griffin Schein, a public relations firm based out of Los Angeles.
With help from the outside groups, the families became a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill. The grieving family members turned into powerful lobbyists. They were granted unprecedented access to lawmakers in their push for “common sense” gun reforms.
Tim Makris, a father of a fourth-grader who survived the rampage, quit his product development job to become the group’s executive director. “It is time for a national conversation in our community and in Congress about responsibility and accountability. We know there are millions of people in this nation who agree with us,” said Makris at a January press conference to announce their goals.
By late January newscasters and politicians had coined the term “the Newtown Effect” to describe the families’ unique ability to sway public opinion. The national conversation they sought over assault weapons had gained momentum, dominating the front pages of newspapers nationwide and the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle. Many believed an assault weapons ban was all but inevitable.
Still, if the families were to achieve their legislative victory, they would have to defeat one of the most powerful interest groups in the country: the National Rifle Association and its more than four and a half million members. The NRA also had an ally in Mark Mattioli, whose six-year-old son, James, was killed inside Sandy Hook Elementary. The other Newtown families were misdirecting their energies by focusing primarily on firearms, according to Mattioli, who believed the real solution could be found in mental health legislation.
He made his case to state legislators at an emotional hearing on gun control in January in Hartford, Connecticut. “I don’t care if you named [the gun law] ‘James’s law,’ I don’t want it,” Mattioli said. “I think there’s much more promise for a solution in identifying, researching, and creating solutions along the lines of mental health.”
Other Second Amendment advocates argued that proposed laws to ban assault weapons, limiting the number of bullets allowed per clip, or increasing background checks would do little or nothing to reduce violence. Professor James Jacobs, a criminologist at New York University, believes that none of the proposed legislation would have prevented the shooting at Newtown or have any real impact on the rate of violent crimes.
“The laws would have virtually no effect. They would do nothing except maybe score points with some voters,” says Jacobs, author of Can Gun Control Work?
The laws already on the books in Connecticut made Adam Lanza’s possession of any guns illegal. He was only twenty years old at the time of the killing, and Connecticut law prohibits anyone under the age of twenty-one from owning a gun. Adam broke another law when he carried his two semiautomatic handguns and a semiautomatic rifle onto school property, which is a felony, unless given prior permission by the school. Other proposals to screen gun owners for mental health issues would not have applied, since the guns Adam used were purchased by his mother, Nancy.
Jacobs is also quick to point out that despite the increase in weapons, violent crime rates have been trending downward for decades. According to the FBI, violent crime has been steadily declining. In 2011, an estimated 1,203,564 violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 3.8 percent from the 2010 estimate. The 2011 estimated violent crime total was 15.4 percent below the 2007 level and 15.5 percent below the 2002 level.
“The idea that we are in the midst of an epidemic of violence is pure fantasy,” says Jacobs. “If any
thing, we are experiencing an epidemic of nonviolence.”
Banning assault guns would merely be “feel good” legislation, according to Jacobs, who says the main difference between weapons that fall under the label “assault” and those that don’t is purely cosmetic. “Assault weapons do the same thing as handguns. They shoot the same bullets. The only difference is that they look scary,” said Jacobs.
Less than two months later, the bill to ban assault weapons was defeated by a 40–60 vote. A separate amendment introduced by Senator Richard Blumenthal to limit the size of magazines to ten rounds also failed with a vote of 46–54. It was a blow to President Obama’s agenda and a larger blow to the Newtown families. As the votes were read, many of them watched from the Senate gallery and broke out in tears.
On the six-month anniversary of the shooting, two hundred people gathered outside the Edmond Town Hall to remember the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School with twenty-six seconds of silence—one for each slain student and teacher.
“Although it has been six months, we have not forgotten and we will never forget the ones who have died,” Carlee Soto declared at 9:37 A.M. Some in the crowd carried signs that read “We Are Sandy Hook. We Choose Love.”
“I urge Congress to lead on this issue, and make sure we do everything in our power to keep the guns out of the wrong hands,” Soto continued as the crowd cheered.
In the backdrop, the screen showed the number 6,003—the number of people killed by guns since December 14, 2012, according to organizers. After several short speeches the names of each of those 6,003 victims were read aloud.
“Newtown changed America,” Senator Richard Blumenthal had declared at the February 27 meeting, but at least as far as gun reform is concerned, the results remain mixed. While Congress’s proposals to ban assault weapons and expand background checks for firearm purchases may have fallen short, several states passed related laws of their own in the months following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. During the first six months, five states tightened gun laws: Connecticut, Colorado, New York, Delaware, and Maryland. Meanwhile, fifteen other states have loosened them: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Connecticut added more than one hundred guns to the state’s list of banned assault weapons. Along with armor-piercing bullets, gun magazines are limited to a capacity of ten rounds. The new law also requires that all firearms sales, including at gun shows, must go through background checks and imposes stiffer penalties for illegal possession and trafficking of guns. The state also created the nation’s first registry of people convicted of crimes involving the use, or threat of, dangerous weapons, which will be made available to law enforcement.
Maryland banned the sale of forty-five types of assault weapons and limited magazine capacity to ten rounds. The new law also requires that residents purchasing a handgun must be fingerprinted and go through a safety training course. In Delaware and Colorado, background checks became mandatory for all gun purchases and magazines were limited to a capacity of ten rounds.
New York state passed a sweeping law banning high-capacity magazines, and requiring assault weapons to be registered within the state, including those already owned by residents. All gun buyers must undergo background checks, except transactions among immediate family members. The new law also bans the sale of all assault weapons on the Internet and requires mental health professionals who believe a patient might be a danger to society to report that information to a health care director, who must then relay what they determine to be serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.
Still, despite the setbacks, the families remain determined to push forward through the long haul. Those who are part of Sandy Hook Promise believe they have the resolve needed for a fight that they envision might take several years, or even decades. “We know this isn’t a sprint. It is a marathon and we intend on keeping this conversation going for as long as it takes. We know it is not going to be easy, but we are a very determined group of people,” said Mark Barden.
“I made a promise to Dylan after he died that I would do whatever was in my power to make sure that something like this never happens again,” said Nicole Hockley. “I am going to state and local legislators for common sense legislation. There need to be background checks. There need to be magazine limits. There is no need for thirty rounds.
“America has a lot of guns. It always will. No one is going to take those away. All I am asking for is some common sense,” Hockley added. “This isn’t about politics for me. It is about a promise I made to my son and it is a promise I intend on keeping to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening again.”
CHAPTER 20
A TIME TO HEAL
Twenty days after the shooting, on Thursday, January 3, 2013, the students from Sandy Hook Elementary finally went back to school. Along the way to their new school in nearby Monroe County, students saw handmade greetings and bouquets of balloons in the Sandy Hook green-and-white colors. In the prior week, contractors had been working around the clock to make Chalk Hill Middle School look familiar. When students walked in, they saw the desks arranged in the same patterns and the same posters on the wall.
They were also greeted with a massive police presence. Every car entering the school grounds had to go through a police checkpoint and the driver had to show identification. Bomb-smelling dogs roamed the playground.
On June 21, 2013, the start-of-summer tradition began as yellow school buses departed Chalk Hill Middle School flying colored streamers from their windows, marking the last day of an unimaginably painful school year. While the familiar sights and sounds of joy typical of the last day of school were all around, for Newtown this summer break would be unlike any other. There were the twenty first-graders who wouldn’t be making that last bus ride. There were the five educators who wouldn’t be packing up their classrooms. Their beloved principal, Dawn Hochsprung, wouldn’t be waving to them, but her legacy was scrawled across a school bus window in the form of her favorite words of wisdom: “Be nice to each other. It’s really all that matters.”
The media had left town long ago, moving on to the next big story, finally giving residents some space to embark on the beginning stages of trying to heal from the precious loss of life, and from the shattered image of a town that had lost its identity to tragedy. For the interconnected web of families, a new normalcy began to take hold. For families with post-traumatic stress disorder, that new normal often means sleepless nights and extra hugs, and lots of counseling.
The family of Carrie Battaglia, including her two children who survived the shooting, is only now beginning to understand the emotional damage inflicted on that day. “My daughter heard everything. She heard the shooting, the pleading, crying, everything,” said Battaglia, referring to the sounds coming from Victoria Soto’s classroom next door. “You can’t undo that.
“She was sure she was going to die,” her mother added. “She did not want to die before Christmas.”
Her six-year-old daughter now suffers from PTSD. Loud noises frighten her, and in her dreams she often relives that horrible day. “She’s afraid to go to sleep. She has nightmares every night, usually that she is in the school and something is trying to get her, to kill her.”
The school day isn’t much better. If there is a loud noise, her daughter puts her hands over her ears. The high school provided counselors in the days and weeks afterward. Therapy dogs were brought in, too, but still she is struggling to live a normal life. “If she hears a loud noise she sometimes withdraws. The teachers have to soothe her back,” said Battaglia.
Her eight-year-old daughter, a third-grader at the school, has also been affected by the morning of December 14. “Her friends lost their brothers and sisters. She knows she almost lost her sister,” said Battaglia. “She has been having a very hard time.”
Still, both girls are making progres
s through regular visits to a trauma specialist at their new school and, in time, their mother hopes the nightmares will end.
For parents, the mental anguish of that day has also had a long-lasting impact beyond what anyone could have expected. Barbara Sibley, who was standing at the school’s front door when the shooting began and dove for cover behind a Dumpster, randomly breaks down in tears.
“I always thought post-traumatic stress disorder was for soldiers coming back from war,” Barbara said. “It took me a while to accept that I could have it.”
It was days before Barbara could shake the chill that entered her body on that December morning. As she gave her account to the FBI, her husband, Rob, had to keep draping her with heavy blankets, to no avail. She couldn’t get warm.
The next week at a local cafe where she was to meet with a coworker to discuss an upcoming project, she began to experience a panic attack for the first time in her life. “I couldn’t function. I felt paralyzed,” she recalled.
When her eight-year-old son, Daniel, a third-grader inside Teri Alves’s classroom, came home, she remembered him acting normal. Months later, he still suffers from nightmares.
After entering the school, Barbara’s husband, Rob, an EMT for the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company, who entered the school looking for survivors, still doesn’t feel comfortable talking about what he saw that day. “Our lives, our family, will never be the same. Every day it’s a new challenge and we have to keep moving forward,” Barbara said.
Newtown: An American Tragedy Page 20
