Tragedy

WASHINGTON - An unwavering National Rifle Association said Sunday that not a single new gun regulation was needed to prevent mass shootings such as the one at a Connecticut elementary school, that "a media machine" relishes blaming the gun industry for each new attack, and that a White House task force on gun violence may try to undermine the Second Amendment. "Look, a gun is a tool. The problem is the criminal," the CEO of the nation's largest gun-rights lobby said in a nationally broadcast television interview, mocking supporters of gun controls.

WASHINGTON - Before 20 first graders were massacred at school by a gunman in Newtown, Conn., first grader Luke Schuster, 6, was shot to death in New Town, N.D. Six-year-olds John Devine Jr. and Jayden Thompson were similarly killed in Kentucky and Texas. Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6, died in a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., while 6-year-old Kammia Perry was slain by her father outside her Cleveland home, according to an Associated Press review of 2012 media reports.

As Ron Jones lodged his shotgun against his shoulder Friday night, took aim and fired, a heaviness hung over the Lower Providence Rod & Gun Club's weekly trapshoot in Montgomery County as thick as the smoke that belched from his firearm. Across the state, sportsmen like Jones have watched with trepidation as talk of tighter gun laws echoes from Washington to Harrisburg, since 20 children and six adults were killed in a Connecticut school by a man with a semiautomatic rifle. Now, amid rising calls for state and federal bans on assault weapons and high-volume ammo clips, the electoral might of Pennsylvania gun owners may be tested anew.

Marion Cotillard won the best actress Academy Award in 2007 for her performance as the iconic chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose . It's highly likely that Cotillard, who has managed to work both sides of the Atlantic - in her native France and in Hollywood - will be nominated again in January, for her work in an altogether different sort of French film, Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone. As a Marineland whale trainer who experiences a catastrophic accident, leaving her a double amputee, Cotillard brings riveting emotional authenticity to the sort of role that is easy to overplay, to sentimentalize.

NEWTOWN, Conn. - The family of Noah Pozner was mourning the 6-year-old, killed in the Newtown school massacre, when outrage compounded their sorrow. Someone they didn't know was soliciting donations in Noah's memory, claiming that they'd send any cards, packages and money collected to his parents and siblings. An official-looking website had been set up, with Noah's name as the address, even including petitions on gun control. Noah's uncle, Alexis Haller, called on law-enforcement authorities to seek out "these despicable people.

Privately, Ramona DiGiacomo Johnstone of Woodbury struggled to cope with her only son's murder, speaking about him sometimes in the present tense. But publicly, the gregarious, 4-foot-11 woman would chat up strangers and get to know them quickly. "She could empathize with people," said her brother-in-law Charles DePaulis. "She knew your life story in 10 minutes. " Five years after her 27-year-old son, Thomas Lennox III, a Delaware County businessman, was fatally beaten in Pennsylvania, Johnstone, 54, was fatally stabbed Monday in her apartment.

HARRISBURG - For the last two years, the words gun control vanished from the political debate in the state Capitol. With Republicans controlling the legislature and the Governor's Office in a state that issued thousands of hunting licenses in 2012, the only controversial gun-related legislation under consideration was a bill to expand gun rights under the so-called castle doctrine. That bill, allowing individuals to use deadly force when threatened anywhere outside their homes as well as inside, passed easily.

That it takes a special person to be a teacher was never more evident than during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, whose brave staff sacrificed their lives for the children who looked to them for protection. Every day, in less horrific situations, teachers in systems such as Philadelphia's also learn what it means to be confronted by senseless violence. Often it makes them question their choice of profession. Good teachers, though, stay committed. They keep coming back to the classroom.

By Petula Dvorak We live in a society that makes it easy to kill kids. Though we want to pretend that isn't true. Because the kids gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on Friday were swaddled in federally regulated fire-retardant blankets, rode in elaborate car seats plastered with safety stickers, learned to ride bikes with safety helmets, and were never left alone with a plastic bag. Some may never have had a Twinkie....

NEWTOWN, Conn. - This, residents say, is a special town. Why, exactly? They'll point you to the town's prized flagpole, which stands in the middle of an intersection on Main Street. They'll mention the Newtown General Store, purveyor of locally grown delicacies and piping-hot coffee. They speak fondly of $2 movie nights at the town hall, tree lightings at Christmas and parades on Labor Day. Then there's tiny Sandy Hook, a bit of small-town Americana that could have sprung, fully formed, from a Norman Rockwell painting.