For the 16th time this year, an armed madman committed a mass shooting in the United States on Friday.  A little more than a week before Christmas, 20 7 and 8 year old students in Newtown, CT were gunned down in their school, along with 6 of their educators.  It was an unspeakable act that once again brings about two unfortunate truths about our society: mental health is not readily available to those that need it and the right to bear arms outweighs the rights of these children to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

27 families had their worlds shattered last week.  May the victims rest in peace and their loved ones somehow find some semblance of solace.

Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Rachel Davino

Olivia Engel

Josephine Gay

Dylan Hockley

Dawn Hochsprung

Madeline Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalski

Nancy Lanza

Jesse Lewis

Ana Marquez-Greene

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Anne Marie Murphy

Emile Parker

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Lauren Rousseau

Mary Sherlach

Victoria Soto

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

 

February 22, 2012—Five people were killed in at a Korean health spa in Norcross, Georgia, when a man got into an argument and opened fire inside the facility.

 

February 26, 2012—Multiple gunmen began firing into a nightclub crown in Jackson, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring 20 others.

 

February 27, 2012—Three students at Chardon High School in rural Ohio were killed when a classmate opened fire.

 

March 8, 2012—Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when a gunman entered the hospital with two semiautomatic handguns and began firing.

 

March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.

 

April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.

 

April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded.

 

May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself.

 

July 9, 2012—At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, Delaware, three people were killed, including a 16-year-old player and the event organizer, when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer.

 

July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded.

 

August 5, 2012—A white supremacist and former Army veteran shot six people to death inside a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

 

August 14, 2012—Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage; one of the dead was a police officer.

 

September 27, 2012—A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entered his former workplace and shot five people to death, and wounded three others before killing himself.

 

October 21, 2012—45-year-old Radcliffe Frankin Haughton shot three women to death, including his wife, Zina Haughton, and injured four others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

 

December 11, 2012—A 22-year-old began shooting at random at a mall near Portland, Oregon, killing two people and then himself.

 

December 14, 2012—One man murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.