Remembering Sandy Hook 11 years later

SALISBURY — About 60 people turned out at the town Green in Salisbury Friday evening, Dec. 15, for a candlelight vigil noting the 11th anniversary of the school shooting in Sandy Hook Dec. 14, 2012.

The event was sponsored by the Northwest Corner Committee for Gun Violence Prevention.

Organizer Sophia Deboer said, “Many of us thought that Sandy Hook was going to be the unfathomable event that changed things, the tipping point, that our elected officials would respond forcefully to prevent more mass shootings.”

She expressed disappointment about action at the federal level but noted the passage in 2022 of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) noted that Connecticut has taken significant legal steps since Sandy Hook.

“We have passed strong laws and they work,” she said, noting that Connecticut has one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the U.S.

The Rev. Dr. John Nelson, pastor of Salisbury Congregational Church, asked, “Is it necessary to say once again that the right to fullness of life supercedes any rights to wield a weapon?”

As Ed Thorney and Gary Reiss played guitars and sang, followed by the reading of the names of the Sandy Hook victims, Nelson disappeared down the street. He went to ring the church bells, once for each of the 26 victims.