Call me an insensitive gun nut if you want, but this just makes absolutely no sense, what-so-freakin-ever, to me. In this day and age when towns are increasingly finding themselves strapped for cash, what sense does it make to demolish a perfectly good school building only to have to replace it at a cost that will most likely be in the neighborhood of 10 times more expensive than was the original building. It all makes me a little curious if there might be another reason that’s behind the demolition. I mean why put your town through the inconvenience of having no school as well as having to come up with the necessary funds to replace a perfectly good school building?
So anyway, demolition of Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School has now officially, albeit rather quietly, begun, Newtown's highest elected official said 10 months after mass shootings. "Small scale demo activity has begun and will accelerate over the next days," First Selectwoman Patricia Llodra told television station WVIT, West Hartford, Conn. She added, "The process of demolition is incremental, staged precisely and executed carefully," she said. "There is no wrecking-ball action. It is rather a piece-by-piece, section-by-section removal." The work site will also be shielded from public view so as to prevent anyone from taking photos or videos.
I’m sure no one is in need of being reminded that it was this school which was the scene where 20 schoolchildren and six adult staff members were killed on Dec. 14. The shooting was the second deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, which left 32 people dead. The Sandy Hook shootings were then quickly exploited to the fullest by anti-gun Democrats, who were successful in their efforts to bring about stricter gun laws in Connecticut, New York and other nearby states. Barry "Almighty’ also did his best to use the tragedy to bring about stricter gun laws on the national level, but failed in his attempt.
Apparently all parts of the elementary school, as well as the playground, driveway and sidewalks, will be either pulverized or melted down so pieces of the tragedy can't be taken away as souvenirs or sold to bidders on eBay, Llodra said last week. The 28-member Sandy Hook School Task Force voted unanimously May 15 to demolish the school and build a new one on the same spot. Town voters voted overwhelmingly Oct. 5 to fund the project with a $49 million state grant. So I can only assume that Connecticut must be rolling in the dough to the point where they have that kind of money to blow. It’s a blue state, so taxes can always be raised to cover the cost.
We’re also told that the entrance to the new school, which is scheduled to open by December 2016, will be relocated so people won't have to walk in front of a firehouse where anguished parents waited hours before learning their children were dead, or so the Los Angeles Times has said. While most residents say they want the school removed, a parent whose son was a first-grader at Sandy Hook when the mass shooting erupted said he considered the demolition a final surrender to the 20-year-old shooter, whose name is rarely said out loud in Newtown. While I can’t how I would feel if I were to ever find myself is such a position, I don’t think I’d act like these people.
The bottom line here is that bad things are always going to happen to good people, it’s just a fact of life. Frankly I just don’t understand what’s to be gained from tearing down this school. Will doing so erase the memories of that terrible day? Is the act of tearing down this school a way of paying tribute to those who died? Is this something that they, themselves, would want? I just don’t get it. Like I said, it makes zero sense to me. Personally, a nice plaque, and perhaps a flag, in commemoration of those who died would be much more appropriate. Tearing down the school just seems like an unnecessary waste to me, and it only compounds the unnecessary waste that was the loss of life that occurred that day in December.
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