First funerals held as US faces political divide over gun control

Family, friends and townspeople streamed to two funeral homes in Newtown to say goodbye to Jack Pinto and Noah Pozner.

A rabbi presided at Noah’s service, and in keeping with Jewish tradition, the boy was laid to rest in a simple brown wooden coffin adorned with a Star of David.

Outside the funeral home, well-wishers placed two teddy bears, a bouquet of white flowers and a red rose at the base of an old maple tree.

Noah’s twin sister, Arielle, who was in a different classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School, survived.

Hymns rang out from inside the funeral home where Jack’s service was being held.

“The message was: You’re secure now. The worst is over,” one mourner, Gwendolyn Glover, said.

Officials in the shell-shocked town are unsure if the school will ever re-open as plans are being made to send surviving pupils to a former school building in a neighbouring town.

Investigators have offered no motive for the shooting by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza who shot dead his mother at home in bed before driving to the school.

Newtown police Lieutenant George Sinko said he “would find it very difficult” for students to return to the same school where 20 children and six teachers died.

But he added: “We want to keep these kids together. They need to support each other.”

Police said Lanza was carrying an arsenal of ammunition big enough to kill every student in the school. All the victims were shot more than once and some at close range. Lanza, who had earlier killed his mother, shot himself in the head just as he heard police drawing near.

Investigators believe he attended Sandy Hook many years ago, but they could not say why he went there on Friday. Authorities said Lanza had no criminal history, and it was not clear whether he had a job.

Lanza is believed to have used a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle in the school attack. Versions of the gun were outlawed in the United States under the 1994 assault weapons ban. That law expired in 2004, and Congress, in a nod to the political power of the gun-rights lobby, did not renew it.

At both funeral homes yesterday, questions over the availability of guns were being raised.

“If people want to go hunting, a single-shot rifle does the job, and that does the job to protect your home, too. If you need more than that, I don’t know what to say,” Ray DiStephan said outside Noah’s funeral.

He added: “I don’t want to see my kids go to schools that become maximum-security fortresses. That’s not the world I want to live in, and that’s not the world I want to raise them in.”

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and dozens of shooting survivors and victims’ relatives yesterday called on President Obama to tighten gun laws and enforcement. He said the carnage demanded “immediate national action”.

Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, said it was time for the debate to move beyond political rhetoric and begin an honest discussion about reasonable restrictions on guns.

“Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered,” he said.

The self-described “proud outdoorsman and hunter” added: “I don’t know anyone in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault rifle, I don’t know anybody who needs 30 rounds in a clip to go hunting.”

President Obama signalled his intention to bring in gun control laws in the wake of the massacre, saying he will use “whatever power” he has to prevent a repeat.

“What choice do we have?” Mr Obama said at an emotional vigil in the community on Sunday night.

“Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”