Former President Barack Obama.Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty
PresidentBarack Obamais remembering thetragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary Schoolin Newtown, Conn., as “one of the darkest days” of his presidency.
“Nine years ago was one of the darkest days of my presidency,” Obama, 60,said on TwitterTuesday, the anniversary of the shooting. “Today we remember the children and adults who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the families who have endured so much grief.”
In a follow-up post, Obama said, “The best way to honor them — the only way that really matters — is to fight this epidemic of gun violence and prevent even more senseless death and suffering. We can, and must, do more.”
The murder of 20 children and the adults who cared for them did not spur lawmakers to act in pursuit of real change to curb gun violence, however, which has increased since the Sandy Hook shooting.
Shortly after the 2021 shooting,Obama addressed the entire nationfrom the White House.
“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies over the past few years,” he said at the time. “And each time I learn the news, I react not as a president but as anybody else would, as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America that doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.”
“The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” he continued. Then, with tears in his reddened eyes, Obama became emotional and stood in silence while White House photographers in the briefing room snapped his picture.
“They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own,” he said.
The president then said the country is grieving for the victims and their families. “Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been lost,” he said.
A former White House photographerspoke to PEOPLE in 2017about how the president responded to the news in 2012, calling it the “worst day” of Obama’s presidency.
Pete Souza/The White House/Getty.
Sandy Hook Elementary did not welcome students into its classrooms on Tuesday.
Dec. 12 “is always difficult for so many staff, students, and families,” Rodrigue wrote in a letter to her school community. “Aside from the emotion this day evokes, we often have to deal with calls or anonymous threats that raise levels of stress for the entire school community.”
Like he did in his tweets on Tuesday, Obama called for “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies” on the day of the shooting in 2012.
He ended his briefing with a prayer: “May God bless the memory of the victims and, in the words of Scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.”
source: people.com
