'Blood on their hands': Pelosi rips GOP colleagues on Newtown mass murder anniversary

WASHINGTON – It’s been 11 years now – to the day – since most Americans learned how easily a person could use an AR-15 assault rifle to kill20 six- and seven-year-olds, along with six adults, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Hundreds more mass shootings have followed — at churches, concerts, shopping centers, supermarkets and, of course, many other schools. A commonality: sociopathic killers often choose AR-15s over less efficient killing machines.

While the sorrow remains real and raw, the politics of guns have only grown more heated, divisive and partisan in recent years. They’re also now used as political props.

“They have blood on their hands,” speaker emerita, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Raw Story of her GOP colleagues today.

A lot’s changed in the decade and a year since the massacre, like, there are now more guns than citizens in America (roughly 120.5 guns per 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey).

There are also now more mass shootings than days of the year, at least for 2023, which has witnessed 635 mass shootings so far, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

You wouldn’t know that from the mood on Capitol Hill these days. Before Republicans formally even regained control of the House of Representatives in January, someone in GOP leadership ordered the removal of post-Jan. 6 metal detectors, which had stopped Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) from bringing a pistol to the chamber’s floor.

The House Natural Resources dropped its ban on firearms in the committee.

Then AR-15 pins started popping up on Republican lapels – gifts from second-term Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), a gun store owner.

To many conservatives, those pins – which scream from the chests of the GOP’s ranks of giddy gun lovers – are symbols of their steadfast commitment to the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment and the right for law-abiding Americans to own a gun.

But the pins are vulgar affronts to the victims of gun violence in the opinion of most elected Democrats and even some Republicans, although the latter are loath to say so publicly.

Pelosi says the mood change at the Capitol is palpable. It’s also disturbing.

“I think it's a disgrace, yet again, another disgrace on the part of the Republicans,” Pelosi told Raw Story at the Capitol. “Not only are they not appreciating what happened in our country when those children were killed, but they're rubbing our noses in it. They are responsible. They have blood on their hands.”

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, families of nine of the victims won a historic settlement with Remington – the maker of AR-15-style rifles – for$73 million.

But the money is no consolation for the holes the weapon tore through their families.

The money’s also been little consolation to the survivors who are regularly reminded of the AR-15’s popularity, especially with mass shooters.

Just in October,18 people in Maine were slaughtered by a man armed withtwo AR-style weapons.

Last year, an AR-15-style rifle was used to kill10 Black grocery shoppers in Buffalo, N.Y.

A mere 10 days later, a similar weapon slaughtered another19 children and two adults at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

An AR-15-style rifle was also the weapon of choice used to kill17 people at Florida’s Stoneman Douglass High School in 2018.

In October of 2017, 60 people were gunned down in Las Vegas at the other end of a smoking AR-style barrel.

The next month,26 churchgoers were mowed down by a similar weapon in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

In 2016, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.49 lives were snuffed out by an AR-15 style rifle.

That’s not including the thousands of survivors who made it out with their lives, but whose worlds are permanently altered. In the 2017 Vegas concert shooting alone, a staggering 869 were injured in the mayhem – 413 of whom were treated for gunshot or shrapnel wounds.

The list goes on. And on. And on.

That’s why Republicans’ embrace of AR-15s is so offensive to so many.

“It's hard to imagine they put AR-15 pins on,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) – a U.S. Senate candidate – told Raw Story. “They demonstrate that they care about AR-15’s more than they care about the lives of children.”

Other things have also changed since 20 children were slaughtered in Connecticut 11 years ago, namely, there’s now a powerful gun violence prevention movement both outside and inside of Congress.

Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) is now on her third term in Congress representing Newtown. The former teacher and school administrator remembers being spurred to run for office in the wake of the massacre.

“My commitment to keep children alive is why I am here. On that day, my students asked me, ‘Miss, why aren’t the adults doing anything to make them stop?’” Rep Jahana Hayes (D-CT) said at a remembrance ceremony on the Capitol steps this morning.

Democrats have made some incremental gains, like when they passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act last year, but they accuse the GOP of doing the bidding of the gun lobby, even as gun homicides spike.

Passage of theBipartisan Safer Communities Act – the first major gun-control measure to pass Congress in three decades – was heralded by some Democrats as a major victory in the last Congress. It’s aimed at shoring up America’s background check system, including enhanced background checks for purchasers under age 21. It also attempts to stymie gun traffickers, close the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by removing weapons from violent partners and it includes billions of dollars for mental health programs, especially in the nation’s schools.

But even with the historic win, Democrats say more is needed, including the reinstatement of an assault weapons ban and instituting near-universal background checks for firearms purchases.

Democrats are in the minority, so they’ve been forced to turn to discharge petitions – which force the House to take up the measures even over the protest of the speaker of the House if they garner majority support in the chamber – to try and advance those measures in this 118th Congress.

They also plan to turn up the heat on the GOP in next year’s general election.

“Children are still dying,” Hayes said. “Enough has not been done.”