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On Dec. 14, 2012, a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then took his own life as police arrived; the 20-year-old had also fatally shot his mother at their home before carrying out the attack on the school.

Here we are, the day after Independence Day, marking our country’s entrance into its 247th year of existence as a nation. Honestly, one might …