The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission will begin its grim work Thursday with an update on the police investigation into the Newtown, Conn. school massacre and presentations on the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings.
According to the
Hartford Courant, 16 experts, appointed by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, will convene for the first of a series of meetings to review the Dec. 14 mass killing last year and propose improvements to current policies related to student safety, gun violence, and mental health.
On Dec. 14, a lone gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. Only the 2007 school shooting at Virginia Tech, where 32 students and staff members were killed, resulted in a greater loss of life caused by a single shooter.
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The panel's first witness will be Danbury Assistant State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky, who will give one of the few official statements about the police investigation.
The Courant reported that former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who was Denver district attorney at the time of the 1999 Columbine attack and a member of the Columbine Review Commission, will also speak. He will be joined by the University of Virginia's Richard Bonnie, a consultant to the Virginia Tech Review Panel and chairman of the Virginia Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.
The meeting, to be broadcast live on the Connecticut Network, coincides with the introduction of federal gun control legislation in Washington.
Members of the Connecticut delegation, along with congressional leaders, will propose banning assault weapons and ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds.
"There is a fight coming,'' Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, told the Courant.
The Sandy Hook commission has been called "the gun panel,'' which its chairman insists is an inaccurate description. Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson maintains the panel has no "predetermined" agenda.
"About half of the people who talk to me about this mistakenly call this the gun panel," he said. "That's not what it is."
Note: Obama's Gun Grab — Do You Agree? Vote Here Now
The commission plans to study gun violence but also school safety and mental health — and will wait to make recommendations until they have heard all the testimony, Jackson promised.
"Having communicated by phone or email with just about everyone on the panel in the last few days, I have a high degree of confidence that we're going to come up with something that makes sense,'' he said.
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