At least eighteen children and eight adults slaughtered at school in Connecticut

Dev­as­tat­ing, heart­break­ing, hor­ri­ble news out of New Eng­land this morn­ing:

At least 27 peo­ple — includ­ing 18 chil­dren — were killed Fri­day morn­ing at a local ele­men­tary school, mark­ing the dead­liest shoot­ing ever in Con­necti­cut and one of the worst ever in the country.

The shoot­ing hap­pened at about 9:40 AM [6:40 AM Pacif­ic Time] at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School, offi­cials said. Police said one shoot­er was killed late Fri­day morn­ing. There were mul­ti­ple reports ear­ly Fri­day after­noon of a sec­ond shooter.

Lt. J. Paul Vance, a state police spokesman, said a shoot­er was dead inside the build­ing. He did not release any details on any of the vic­tims and did not address reports of a sec­ond shooter.

The event sent shock­waves through­out the state and the nation and gen­er­at­ed a response from the FBI and a state­ment from the White House. Fed­er­al author­i­ties are work­ing with New­town and state police to coor­di­nate the response.

Con­necti­cut Gov­er­nor Dan Mal­loy’s office said that state and fed­er­al law enforce­ment per­son­nel were on their way to New­town to help coor­di­nate the emer­gency response. The gov­er­nor’s staff said that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had called the gov­er­nor to express his deep­est con­do­lences and offer fed­er­al assistance.

At least two weapons were said to have been recov­ered, accord­ing to media reports. The deceased sus­pect is thought to be a male in his ear­ly twen­ties, who report­ed­ly came into the school with mul­ti­ple weapons and body armor.

The Pres­i­dent is expect­ed to make a state­ment at the White House shortly.

The death toll from today’s tragedy already appears to be more than twice as high as the awful 1999 Columbine tragedy in Lit­tle­ton, Col­orado, in which twelve peo­ple (most of them high school stu­dents) were killed by Eric Har­ris and Dylan Klebold.

Our hearts go out to the fam­i­lies whose broth­ers, sis­ters, fathers, moth­ers, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and grand­chil­dren were sense­less­ly gunned down this morn­ing. They will be in unimag­in­able pain in the days, weeks, and months ahead. We grieve with them in spir­it and pray that they will find the strength to recov­er from this calami­ty. There is no worse news a fam­i­ly can receive than to hear a child, par­ent, or sib­ling has been gunned down at school.

Pro­po­nents of unre­strict­ed gun own­er­ship will say that now is not the time to talk about imple­ment­ing mea­sures to pre­vent or avert gun vio­lence. We strong­ly dis­agree. We rec­og­nize that a tragedy has just tak­en place, that we do not yet know all of the details about what hap­pened at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary in New­town, that the com­mu­ni­ty there is still in shock, and our thoughts ought to be with the victims.

But the rea­son there are vic­tims at all is because we have failed as a nation to address both the symp­toms and the root caus­es of gun vio­lence. How many more tragedies must we endure before we decide to act? In the past fif­teen years, gun­men have opened fire on inno­cent peo­ple in schools, malls, movie the­aters, col­lege cam­pus­es, gro­cery store park­ing lots, hous­es of wor­ship, and even an Army base.

Since 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. were assas­si­nat­ed, more than a mil­lion peo­ple in the Unit­ed States have been killed by guns. More than a million!

When are we going to decide that enough is enough? When are we going to muster the polit­i­cal will to do some­thing about this prob­lem? What is it going to take? If the mur­der of near­ly two dozen chil­dren in an ele­men­tary school can­not gal­va­nize us to take action, what will?