One Year After Elementary School Massacre, Gun Reforms Unrealized

In the aftermath of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut one year ago, there was a nearly universal call for the reform of gun laws in the U.S. Since then, few reforms have been undertaken and gun violence is rampant as ever.

WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (RECENT - DECEMBER 6, 2013) (REUTERS) - Despite public outrage over the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut one year ago, and the subsequent calls for reforms ofAmerica's gun laws, gun violence continues as a scourge in the gritty neighborhoods of the nation's cities -- just as it has for generations.

On the night of September 17, 2013, outside an apartment complex in southwest Washington, D.C., an argument between rivals escalated to murder when 28-year-old William Hogan fired a gun atRobert Spencer."He said 'yeah, what's up now?' My son turned around. Before he could even respond, he just, pow, one time with a shotgun. It hit him in the chest," Spencer's mother, Tinamarie Spencer, recalled.

Police said 21-year-old Spencer was found suffering from gunshot wounds in the darkened courtyard on Irvington Street, another victim in a decades-long wave of street violence.

"You have people getting shot, killed every single day in the nation's capital," Spencer said.

Gun violence has touched the Spencer family before. Robert's father died at the same age, 21, shot 9 times with an automatic weapon.

Robert's 15-year-old sister Noel, who aspires to become a forensic psychologist, said guns are often a topic for conversation among students in her high school in Washington.

"I hear about like gun violence and gang violence all the time at my school, and to them it's a cool thing to know that somebody was shot and somebody was killed. They get excited over it. They are not concerned or they don't show any remorse at all," Noel Spencer said.

Robert's death came just over ten months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who had grown up in Newtown, killed his mother before driving to the school, where he killed 20 children and six adults, before turning the gun on himself.

As news of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School broke on December 14, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama shed tears at a podium in the White House and said gun deaths, regardless of their location, need to stop.

"As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it's an elementary school in Newtown or a shopping mall in Oregon or a temple in Wisconsin or a movie theater in Aurora or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children. And we're going to have to come together to take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," Obama said.

The shooting massacre prompted executive orders from Obama to toughen gun control laws and inspired a package of national gun control measures in Congress as well as calls for better security in schools, including the presence of armed guards.

Obama supported legislation in Congress this year that would ban rapid-firing "assault" weapons like the one used in Newtown and tighter limits on the capacity of ammunition clips.

Obama also backed a proposal to extend background checks for sales made online and at gun shows.

"It's open season in terms of how people can easily get guns, especially if you're someone prohibited like a domestic violence abuser, a fugitive or a criminal. All you have to do is go online and instantly you have a gun. It's way too easy, far too easy for dangerous and risky people to get guns in this country," Brian Malte, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said.

A Reuters / Ipsos poll in January showed that 86 percent of those surveyed favored background checks for all gun buyers.

But the measures failed to clear the Senate in April in the face of opposition from gun-rights advocates who say it is essential to hold the line on Americans' right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Speculation over legislation limiting gun rights has persisted, driving up sales of fire arms as well as the shares of gun makers in the stock market.

Erich Pratt, a spokesman for the Gun Owners of America, a gun rights group, said both Obama's gun-control approach and gun-free zones for schools and other sites of shootings put people in danger.

"The genie is out of the bottle. There's millions and millions and millions of guns, billions of guns in the world. So when a bad guy has one, how are you going to stop it? You have two choices. One is you call 911 and wait. Or you defend yourself," Pratt said.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, a gun-control bill by Mike Thompson, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has gained 186 co-signers but has been stalled for months.

The bill by Thompson, a gun owner and Second Amendment backer, would expand background checks but also would have features designed to attract support from gun-rights advocates such as banning gun ownership lists.

Meanwhile, in the year since Newtown, a gunman killed 12 people in a mass shooting attack at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. and gun violence has continued to claim lives in crime-ridden urban centers throughout the country. Gang members sprayed bullets into a Chicago city park in September - injuring a three-year-old boy and 12 other people -- after one of them had been grazed by a bullet hours earlier, police said.

But even if federal gun laws were enacted, Spencer said violence would continue until police can get guns off the street.

"Should they ban guns? Yes, I say they should. Should they have stricter gun laws? Yes, they should. But would that stop the killings? Not until they get those guns that's illegal off the street," she said.

After his father's violent death, Spencer said Robert struggled in school programs for "at-risk" youths and decided to create a new mentoring program for teens that would use other teens to teach them how to break away from the negative influences of gang violence.

Robert was working on the program in the neighborhood on Irvington Street when he was shot, she said.

"If we had more mentors out there to take some of these young men off the streets and teach them how to be real men, my son would be living," she said.

Since his death, Spencer says she's created a non-profit corporation called New Reflections to continue her son's effort to steer youths away from gun violence.

"It hurts. But you have to make sure that this person did not lose their life in vain. Even though the guy who shot my son, he took my son away from me, I feel sorry for him. I can't even make myself feel angry at him. I feel like he's a lost soul."

Hogan pleaded guilty to second degree murder while armed in connection with Robert Spencer's death and is expected to be sentenced in January. He could face up to 40 years in prison.