On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. 20 of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and the other six were adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, Lanza fatally shot his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut history and the deadliest at an elementary school in U.S. history. The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals to make the background check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines which can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.

A November 2013 report issued by the Connecticut State Attorney's office stated that Lanza acted alone and planned his actions, but provided no indication of why he did so, or why he targeted the school. A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger's syndrome and, as a teenager, suffered from depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but concluded that these factors "neither caused nor led to his murderous acts". The report went on to say, "his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems [...] combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence [...] (and) access to deadly weapons [...] proved a recipe for mass murder."

Background

As of November 30, 2012, 456 children were enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas, which is the longest-running online news and politics talk show, and was previously broadcast by the Genesis Communications Network across the United States via syndicated and internet radio. Jones's website, InfoWars, promotes conspiracy theories and fake news, as do his other websites, NewsWars and PrisonPlanet.

Among many other conspiracy theories, Jones has alleged that the United States government either concealed information about or outright falsified the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 attacks, and the 1969 Moon landing. He has also claimed that several governments and large businesses have colluded to create a "New World Order" through "manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria". Jones has provided a platform for white nationalists and neo-Nazis on his website, Banned.Video, as well as providing an "entry point" to their ideology. In 2023, leaked texts from Jones's phone revealed that he created the website National File to evade social media bans on InfoWars content.

A longtime critic of Republican and Democratic foreign and security policy, Jones supported Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid and continued to support him as a savior from an alleged criminal bipartisan cabal controlling the federal government, despite also falling out with Trump over several of his policies, including airstrikes against the Assad regime. A staunch supporter of Trump's re-election, Jones also supported the false claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. On January 6, 2021, Jones was a speaker at the rally in Lafayette Square Park supporting Trump preceding the latter's supporters' attack on the US Capitol.