On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza had shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
The incident was the second-deadliest school shooting in United States history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. It also was the second-deadliest mass murder at an American elementary school, after the 1927 Bath School bombings in Michigan.
The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, and a proposal for new legislation banning assault weapons and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition.