Tag Archives: sandy hook

Connecticut school evacuated for bomb threat on sixth anniversary of massacre

FILE PHOTO: The sign for the new Sandy Hook Elementary School at the end of the drive leading to the school is pictured in Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin/File Photo

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – A bomb threat prompted the evacuation of a Connecticut elementary school on the site of the deadliest public-school shooting in U.S. history on Friday, the sixth anniversary of the massacre, police said.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 26 children and educators were killed in 2012, received a threatening phone call around 9 a.m. EST, said police Lieutenant Aaron Bahamonde.

“It was a bomb threat over the phone,” Bahamonde said. About 400 people were evacuated, he said. No bomb was found.

Bahamonde said the threat was unrelated to a Thursday incident in which hundreds of schools, businesses and buildings across the United States and Canada receive email bomb threats demanding payment in cryptocurrency. Authorities dismissed those threats as a hoax.

On Dec. 14, 2012, a 21-year-old gunman killed 20 young children and six educators at Sandy Hook before taking his own life. The building where the massacre took place was torn down, and Sandy Hook students now attend classes in a new facility.

The mass shooting inflamed the long-running U.S. debate on gun rights, which are protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The United States has experienced a string of deadly mass shootings since that attack, including one at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in February that left 17 people dead.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

Facebook, Apple remove most of U.S. conspiracy theorist’s content

FILE PHOTO: Alex Jones from Infowars.com speaks during a rally in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Facebook Inc announced on Monday that it had removed four pages belonging to U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for “repeatedly posting content over the past several days” that breaks its community standards.

The company said it removed the pages “for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

“Facebook bans Infowars. Permanently. Infowars was widely credited with playing a key role in getting Trump elected. This is a co-ordinated move ahead of the mid-terms to help Democrats. This is political censorship. This is culture war,” Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson tweeted https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1026433061469257733.

Neither Jones nor a representative for Infowars was available for comment.

Since founding Infowars in 1999, Jones has built a vast audience. Among the theories he has promoted is that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were staged by the government.

Facebook had earlier suspended the radio and Internet host’s personal profile for 30 days in late July from its site for what the company said was bullying and hate speech.

Most of Jones’s podcasts from his right-wing media platform Infowars have been removed from Apple Inc’s iTunes and podcast apps, the media news website BuzzFeed quoted a company spokesman as saying on Sunday.

Apple told BuzzFeed that it had removed the entire library for five of Jones’s six Infowars podcasts including the shows “War Room” and the daily “The Alex Jones Show.”

Only one program provided by Infowars, “RealNews with David Knight” remained on Apple’s platforms on Sunday, according to news media accounts.

The moves by Apple and Facebook are the most sweeping of a recent crackdown on Jones’s programs by online sites that have suspended or removed some of his conspiracy-driven content. An Apple spokeswoman said in a statement that the company “does not tolerate hate speech” and publishes guidelines that developers and publishers must follow.

“Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming,” Apple said in a statement. “We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.”

Also, Spotify, a music, and podcast streaming company said on Monday that it had now removed all of Jones’s Infowars programs from its platform. Last week it removed just some specific programs.

“We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community,” a representative said Monday.

“Due to repeated violations of Spotify’s prohibited content policies, The Alex Jones Show has lost access to the Spotify platform,” the representative said.

Jones has also promoted a theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was faked by left-wing forces to promote gun control. The shooting left 26 children and adults dead at a Connecticut elementary school.

He is being sued in Texas by two Sandy Hook parents, seeking at least $1 million, claiming that they have been the subject of harassment driven by his programs.

(Reporting by Rich McKay; Additional reporting by Ishita Chigilli Palli and Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Mark Potter, Susan Thomas, Bernard Orr and Jonathan Oatis)

Walmart joins Dick’s Sporting Goods in raising age to buy guns

A general view of Dick's Sporting Goods store in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

By Susan Heavey and Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Walmart Inc, the largest U.S. retailer, joined Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc in raising the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21 after the massacre at a Florida high school that has reopened a fierce debate over gun control in America.

Walmart said that “in light of recent events” it was raising the age for purchasers of firearms and ammunition to 21 from 18. The retailer is also was removing items from its website that resemble assault rifles, including non-lethal airsoft guns and toys. Walmart stopped selling assault firearms and accessories in 2015 and only sells handguns in Alaska.

Dick’s, a U.S. retailer of camping supplies, sporting goods and guns, will stop selling assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. It will not sell any guns to people under age 21, Dick’s chief executive, Ed Stack, said in an open letter on the company’s website.

The announcements came the same day that classes resumed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people, mostly students, were killed two weeks ago in one of the deadliest U.S. mass shootings.

The accused gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, legally purchased a weapon at Dick’s in November, although not the type used in the shooting, Stack said. Cruz, a former student at Stoneman Douglas, is accused of using an AR-15 assault-style weapon to carry out the killing.

The massacre spurred a youth-led wave of protests, and state and national officials are considering whether to pass stricter gun control measures. The powerful National Rifle Association traditionally opposes such curbs, citing the right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Dick’s removed assault-style weapons from its Dick’s-branded stores after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that killed 20 first graders and six adults, but continued selling them through another retail brand. Wednesday’s move takes them out of its 35 Field & Stream outlets as well, Stack said, adding the measure would be permanent.

Some analysts said the 2012 decision did not hurt the retailer’s sales, likely giving company executives confidence to make Wednesday’s move.

Guns for sale are seen inside of Dick's Sporting Goods store in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Guns for sale are seen inside of Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Stack said he knew the company’s decision would upset some customers, but he cited the passionate response by the students and families in Parkland.

“We have heard you,” he said.

Stack said in his letter that Dick’s respects the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners but was obliged to address a national gun epidemic that is killing too many children.

After the Parkland shooting, it was clear there were not enough systemic protections to prevent gun sales to people who are potential threats, Stack said, adding that Congress should tighten background checks to include relevant mental health information.

Dick’s, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, operates about 715 Dick’s-branded stores across the United States. It was the latest company to take action after the Florida shooting. Other businesses have cut ties with the NRA and gun manufacturers.

Amazon.com Inc, the world’s largest online retailer, has long prohibited the sale of firearms and explosives on its websites, as well as ammunition and gun accessories in most cases. It declined comment on the issue on Wednesday.

EBay said its policy prohibits the sale of firearms and high-capacity magazines of more than 10 rounds.

Since the Florida shooting, gun-control supporters have called on Amazon as well as Roku, Apple Inc and others to drop the National Rifle Association’s programming from their streaming services.

Outdoor goods retailer Bass Pro Shops, which acquired Cabelas Inc last year and sells guns under both retail brands, did not respond to requests for comment.

Package delivery company FedEx Corp declined to comment on whether it would change its firearms shipping policy after the Florida shooting, while rival United Parcel Service Inc said it was not changing its policies.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Nandita Bose in New York and Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Eric Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Ben Klayman, Leslie Adler and Cynthia Osterman)

New App will strip mass shooters names from news

A heart that bears 26 crosses for each victim is surrounded by lights the Sandy Hook portion of

BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. anti-gun-violence activists on Wednesday introduced a phone app designed to strip notorious mass shooters’ names and photos from news stories, saying that keeping their images out of the public eye could help avert future mass killings.

The Brady Campaign said the software, called “Zero Minutes of Fame” is intended to address research that shows gunmen who carried out attacks in recent years at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, and at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, had researched and possibly drawn inspiration from prior mass shootings.

The software, a plug-in for Google’s Chrome operating system, replaces the names of killers including Adam Lanza and James Holmes with the phrase “(name withheld out of respect for the victims)” and replaces their photos with an image from a Brady Campaign ad on major news outlets’ websites and in Google searchers.

“Instead of rewarding killers and inspiring copycats, we should be lifting up the stories and the lives of victims, heroes, and survivors,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign. The group is named for James Brady, who was wounded in the 1981 attempt to assassinate then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

“Notoriety serves as a reward for these killers and as a call-to-action for others who would seek to do similar harm in the name of infamy,” Gross said in a statement.

Alongside the software, the campaign unveiled a new two-minute online ad encouraging viewers to sign a petition calling on news media organizations to cease publishing shooters’ names and images. The ad shows images of Newtown gunman Lanza, movie theater shooter Holmes and other people who carried out mass shootings in the United States over the past few years.

According to statistics maintained by the group, an average of 298 people have been shot in the United States each day over the past five years, with 90 people dying of their injuries. The majority of those who died of their injuries had committed suicide, according to the group’s analysis of federal health data.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Frances Kerry)