Even as they buried more victims of the second-deadliest school shooting in US history yesterday, residents of Newtown, Connecticut, looked for ways to put pressure on national leaders to restrict access to weapons.
The funerals of six of the victims took place yesterday. Hundreds of mourners filed into a packed Trinity Episcopal Church for the funeral for Benjamin Wheeler (6), filing in past two rows of boy scouts who lined up outside as a flag-bearing honour guard.
The December 14th rampage in which 28 people were killed, including 20 children and the gunman, has sparked new discussion on tightening gun laws, a thorny political issue in the US, which has a strong culture of individual gun ownership.
Vice-president Joe Biden planned to convene yesterday the first meeting of a new White House task force charged by President Barack Obama with drawing up a plan to tackle gun violence.
After that meeting, attorney general Eric Holder was to travel to Newtown to meet privately law enforcement officials investigating the massacre.
The National Rifle Association, the powerful firearms lobby, which has long resisted any effort to restrict gun ownership, said it would offer at an event in Washington today “meaningful contributions” to prevent future such massacres. – (Reuters)