Many failures in the years since Sandy Hook

All these years later, it remains hard to process what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We know the facts. We watched the aftermath. But it’s still, to this day, difficult to believe it could have happened. Who could do such a thing? How could be it be allowed? How did we not do more to stop it?

The nine years since then have demonstrated that what happened in Newtown was in many ways all too common. Shootings have continued, of course. Hardly any length of time goes by without some mass casualty event involving firearms. And schools, too, have been targeted, as recently as a few weeks ago in Michigan.

Threats of similar attacks have been reported at multiple area schools in the past week, though all, thankfully, appeared to be unsubstantiated. Still, the idea of a gunman at large in a school, which is supposed to be a place of learning, and community, and safety, is no longer unthinkable.

For young people, this is all simply a part of how they’ve grown up.

That may be the biggest indictment of our collective response. Rather than ensure that what happened at Sandy Hook in 2012 could never happen again, we as a nation have instead thrown up our hands and decided the problem is simply too big.

There have been changes, certainly. Connecticut led the way in tightening up gun laws, with New York and other states following suit. But despite some highprofile efforts, the federal government has been unable to do anything. Sen. Chris Murphy, who has become a champion of gun safety in the past nine years, recently acknowledged that the Michigan shooting will not change the calculus in the Senate, meaning universal background checks will remain out of reach.

Mental health, too, has emerged as a key driver of policy, not only as a way to reach people before they resort to violence, but by working with the millions of people viewing the news every day who are traumatized by the real and potential violence all around them.

The COVID era has put a new focus on mental health. But it’s a need that goes much deeper than the pandemic. As we continue to see the effects of Sandy Hook develop nearly a decade later, mental health for students should take on an even greater importance.

Children who were in first grade at the time of the shootings, who may have lost their friends that day, are now in high school. They are just starting to make their way in the world, and to develop a voice of their own. Theirs is the generation that will be tasked with finding a way past our current reality, where our only response to crisis seems to be more stalling.

We need a future where what happened nine years ago remains shocking. We cannot live in a world where attacks on the most vulnerable among us are simply part of life.

We don’t yet know what it will take to get there. But, by declining to ensure Sandy Hook could never happen again, we do know the current generation of leadership has failed our children.