WASHINGTON — The first graders who were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the most horrific school shooting to date would be 19 and 20 years old today.

At the time of that shooting, this reporter was the Washington correspondent for a Connecticut news website, and the brutal deaths of those innocents still weighs heavily on my mind. The violence and terror that visited placid Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, taught me a lot of things I never knew about America’s gun culture.

I learned that there are far more civilian-owned guns (about 500 million now) in the United States than there are people. I also learned Congress is loath to pass even the mildest of reforms and that the deadly AK-47s used to slay the 20 6- and 7-year-olds in Newtown are prized by gun collectors like shoo

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