Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting.
Conspiracy Theory: The Cambridge Dictionary defines a conspiracy theory as being ‘a belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people.
In December 2012, just days before Christmas, a mentally disturbed young man named Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed his mother at their home before entering Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where he undertook what would become the deadliest school shooting within United States history. Within 11 minutes he had fatally shot 20 school children aged only 6-7 years old and 6 of the school’s staff members before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.
As news of the tragedy spread around the world, parents and society globally mourned the senseless deaths of all the innocent individuals involved. An added element of fear when dropping children at school was created where once there was none. Sure, the U.S statistically have higher amount of gun crime compared to other western countries, but the reality was that this could have happened anywhere.
However, conspiracy theories soon emerged with some suggesting the shooting was a false flag massacre planned by the U.S government in order to encourage support for stricter gun laws and even more surprisingly some simply believed that the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting was nothing more than a completely fabricated hoax!
False Flag: Defined on Dictionary.com as an attack or other hostile action that obscures the identity of the participants carrying out the action while implicating another (person) group or nation as the perpetrator.
Political conspiracy theorist, Orly Taitz publicly questioned the authenticity of the shooting on her website, querying aloud whether the U.S Government had gotten hold of Lanza mere days before the massacre, drugged him and subjected him to hypnosis in order to turn him into a ‘killing machine’? Why?…because (then) president Barack Obama was trying to implement stricter gun laws and a tragedy as big as this would surely garner him support. And it did, Petitions began circulating calling for new legislations regarding gun control.
In support of the Government involvement theory, James Tracey, a former professor who taught courses on conspiracy theories, speculated that media reports on the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings were factually incorrect. Perhaps due to a ‘politically motivated cover-up. On his blog, Tracey wrote “One is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.” Controversially, Tracey also suggested that perhaps the shootings didn’t even happen at all and were a hoax orchestrated by the U.S government. He proposed that the parents gathered outside the school were probably “trained actors working under the direction of state and federal authorities.” Unsurprisingly, Florida Atlantic University, where Tracey was tenured at the time, quickly attempted to distance themselves from these theories, claiming they ‘didn’t share his views’.
Clyde Lewis, A U.S talk show host, also questioned the political timing of the shootings. Lewis struggled to accept it was simply coincidental that someone would wake up one day and just randomly decide to ‘shoot up a school’, conveniently around the same time Obama confirmed he would sign the small arms treaty.
Connecticut State Attorney’s office issued a report in 2013 which stated Lanza had no known motive (although assumptions have been made as to possible ones) to target the school but that he had actually pre-planned the attack and he acted alone.
Which leads me nicely onto the Conspiracy theories that there were other shooters involved alongside Lanza….
News Anchor, Ben Swann, mentioned in a ‘Full Disclosure’ episode on his YouTube channel, (with regards to the massacre and reports Lanza acted alone) “That is what police have said, but again, there is evidence beginning to emerge that that wasn’t the case. In fact, there’s a good reason to question this whole narrative. Because there has been no evidence so far – no evidence provided by police, other than what they told us – that there is only one shooter here.” His comments were based on aerial footage of two people running into the woods, one of which is known to have been Lanza. However, it has since been reported that the second person was a parent of one the students at the school. James Tracey had also commented on his blog that evidence of multiple gunmen had been concealed.
Possibly, the most popular conspiracy theory regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings came from Alex Jones, a leading conspiracy theorist. Via his website, Infowars, Jones alleged the murders were a false flag attack, furthermore, he claimed that no-one had died. In agreement with James Tracey, regarding the employment of actors, Jones claimed the children were probably child ‘crisis’ actors. He based his theory on the same as the others mentioned above, that it was a political stunt in order to promote and encourage stricter gun control policies. Jones later retracted his comments and said he did believe the massacre was real. Following a filing of multiple law suits against Jones, he acknowledged the deaths were real and in explanation of his damaging conspiracy theories he said “And I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I’ve now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged,”
Interestingly, most, if not all of the conspiracy theories mentioned, were similar to claims made in regards to the 2012 Aurora, Colorado Shooting.
What do you think? Do you buy into any or all of the conspiracy theories? Let us know on our Facebook page…
References: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orly_Taitz / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Swann Talk Right: https://talkright.talkstreamlive.com/program/clyde_lewis / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories Salon.com: https://www.salon.com/2013/01/14/is_it_okay_for_reporters_to_question_the_official_narrative_of_sandy_hook/ The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/us/sandy-hook-newtown-conspiracy-theorist-sues-university.html CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy-hook/index.html The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/alex-jones-pay-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theory
