Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a twenty-year-old gunman, Adam Lanza, killed twenty children aged six and seven and six adult staff members. He had killed his mother at their home earlier that morning, and he took his own life as police arrived at the school. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in the history of the United States, and shocked the country, leading to calls for stricter gun laws. Connecticut and some other states passed new restrictions, but a bill for expanded background checks failed in the US Senate. The families of the victims were also harassed by conspiracy theorists who claimed that the shooting had been staged, and courts later held some of them liable for defamation.

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