Emails Show Obama WH Planned to Use Sandy Hook Shooting for Political Gain
Former President Barack Obama’s education secretary and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel were planning to turn a national tragedy into a legislative victory for the administration two days after the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
On the morning of Dec. 14, 2010, a 20-year-old man killed his mother in their home then traveled to Sandy Hook Elementary School with a semi-automatic rifle and two pistols in tow.
The man broke into the school and killed another 26 people — 20 of whom were first-grade students. The gunman committed suicide after authorities arrived on the scene.
Two days later, on the evening of Dec. 16, former-Education Secretary Arne Duncan emailed Emanuel under the subject line, “CT shootings,” seeking advice on pushing gun reform legislation, according to The Baltimore Post.
The complete exchange took place between 6:57 p.m. to 7:08 p.m. It follows as first reported by The Post:
Duncan: “What are your thoughts?”
Emanuel: “Go for a vote this week before it fades. Tap peoples’ emotion. Make it simple assault weapons.”
Duncan: “Yup- thanks.”
Emanuel: “When I did Brady bill and assault weapons for Clinton, we always made it simple: Criminals or war weapons.”
Are you surprised to hear of an effort to politicize the Sandy Hook shooting for political gain?
Duncan: “Gun show loophole? Database? Cop-killer bullets? Too complicated?”
Emanuel: “Cop killer maybe. The other no.”
Duncan: “Got it.”
At the time of the shooting, Newtown was the second most deadly mass shooting on a school campus after a 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech where 32 students and teachers were killed.
Emanuel served as an adviser to former-President Bill Clinton from 1992 to 1998. He worked with Clinton to push Congress to pass the 1993 Brady bill that imposed a five-day waiting period for purchasing a handgun.
Emanuel also worked in the White House when Congress passed the 1994 federal assault weapons ban that made 18 specific firearms illegal, along with some gun features and modifications.
The weapons ban timed out after 10 years.
high and high school
students are suspended
at a rate more than three
times as often as their
white peers, twice as
often as their Latino peers,
more than 10 times as often
as their Asian peers.
of Education Secretary Arne
Duncan, the “huge disparity is
ng, professional development,
and discipline policies. It is adult
behavior that needs to change.”
Department sees no difference
between the behavior of black
students and white, Latino, and
Asian students. It’s just that
black students are singled out
for discriminatory discipline.
pressures, school districts
revised their discipline
procedures by cutting the
number of black student
suspensions.
Manhattan Institute, has written
a report, “School Discipline
Reform and Disorder: Evidence
from New York City Public
Schools, 2012-16.”
public schools is called
restorative justice. Rather
than punish a student through
exclusion (suspension),
restorative justice encourages
the student who has
misbehaved to reflect on his
behavior, take responsibility,
and resolve to behave better
in the future.
are increased violence, drug
use, and gang activity.
School Survey of teachers
and students and finds that
violence increased in 50
percent of schools and
decreased in 14 percent. Gang
activity increased in 39 percent
of schools and decreased in
11 percent.
was a 37 percent increase while
only 7 percent of schools
improved.
discipline is worse under the
Obama administration’s policy.
Eden reports:
City a teacher said that:
was kicked in the head by
a student said: “We have
fights here almost every day.
The kids walk around and
say, ‘We can’t get
suspended—we don’t care
what you say.’”
John Choi of St. Paul,
Minnesota, described how
the number of assaults
against teachers doubled
from 2014 to 2015 and
called the situation a
“public health crisis.”
Commission on Civil Rights,
a former Philadelphia
teacher said that a student
told him, “I’m going to torture
you. I’m doing this because
I can’t be removed.” Eden’s
report cites similar school
horror stories in other cities.
violence and discipline
problems rest with black
students, there are a few
questions that black parents,
politicians, academics, and
civil rights advocates should
ponder.
among blacks so high that
black people can afford to
allow miscreants and thugs
to sabotage the education
process?
Obama administration’s
harebrained restorative
justice policy, can blacks
afford for anything to
interfere with the acquisition
of academic excellence?
restorative justice policy
differ from a Ku Klux Klan
policy that would seek to
sabotage black education
by making it impossible for
schools to rid themselves
of students who make
education impossible for
everyone else?