• Connecticut governor signs comprehensive gun control legislation

    Connecticut will now limit the size of gun magazines to 10 rounds, expand the state's assault weapons ban and require universal background checks for all gun sales. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

    With a green and white ribbon to commemorate the victims of one of the worst school shootings in American history pinned to his lapel, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy signed a broad new package of gun laws Thursday in the state where 20 children and 6 educators were slain nearly four months ago.


    Connecticut is the third state, following Colorado and New York, to pass sweeping new gun legislation after the December school shooting.

    “This is a profoundly emotional day, I think, for everyone in this room and everyone watching what is transpiring today in the state of Connecticut,” Malloy said before signing the bill. “We have come together in a new way that relatively few places in our nation have demonstrated an ability to do.”

    Lawmakers had worked to forge a bipartisan consensus around the bill. The final package limited the size of gun magazines to 10 rounds, expanded the state's existing assault weapons ban, and required universal background checks on all gun sales in the state.

    The bill passed by bipartisan majorities in both the Senate and the House.

    “I’ve been amazed at the strength of the families since the day of Newtown,” Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman said at the Thursday ceremony.

    State Sen. John McKinney, a Republican who represents Newtown, said on Wednesday that the bill was an imperfect but necessary step in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

    "The message we can send if those outside the walls of Connecticut are listening is encourage them to do the same, encourage our elected officials in Washington to put aside the politics and see if they can find some common ground," McKinney said Wednesday.

    The Connecticut Citizens Defense League, a group that opposes gun control, denounced the new legislation in a post on its blog, saying that when the bill took effect Connecticut would have “the most unconstitutional gun laws in the entire country.”

    Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds in fewer than 300 seconds after he entered the Newtown school armed with a Bushmaster .223 rifled and several 30-round magazines, according to investigators.

    The shooting provoked a national outcry for tighter gun controls, but so far, with the exception of Colorado, New York and Connecticut, few states have made sweeping changes.

    And a handful of states, such as Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, have gone the other direction, passing laws that would expand who can carry a gun and where.

    President Obama pushed for a new federal law requiring more comprehensive background checks in a speech in Colorado on Wednesday. Obama said there “doesn’t have to be a conflict” between new gun laws and respect for gun rights.

    Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said the Connecticut bill provides an example to his fellow federal lawmakers on how to pass “tough, common sense gun laws.”

    “The people of our state know that it takes bold, courageous action like this to help prevent the next tragic shooting,” Murphy said in a statement.

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who led an aggressive January charge to tighten his state’s already strict laws, congratulated Connecticut lawmakers on Thursday “for taking bold new action to protect the people of their state.”

    The mother of one of the school children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School thanked Gov. Malloy at the Thursday signing. Nicole Hockley’s son Dylan was among the young students who died on December 14.

    “While I am grateful for the progress being made, I wish more than anything that I were just back at home waiting till it was time for both Dylan and Jake to come home from school,” Hockley said.

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  • Very heavily armed gunman shot mother multiple times before killing 26 at Connecticut school, police say

    Investigators are putting together a timeline of Friday's shooting, beginning with Adam Lanza's allegedly shooting his mother while she slept before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Updated at 7:34 p.m. ET: Adam Lanza, who authorities say killed 20 children and six women in Connecticut, shot his mother in the head multiple times before heading to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he fired hundreds of rounds and died with hundreds more at his disposal, police said Sunday.


    It was an extraordinary amount of weaponry that Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance described Sunday. In addition to an assault-style rifle and at least two handguns, he also had a shotgun in reserve in the car he drove to the school.

    And when he was found, Lanza, 20, still had "hundreds of rounds" of ammunition in multiple magazines, after having already fired hundreds of rounds inside the school, where he killed himself with a gunshot to the head as emergency crews arrived Friday. 

    An explanation still hasn't emerged for why Lanza killed the 26 people at Sandy Hook, but Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy opened a window for speculation when he told NBC News on Sunday that it appeared that Lanza attended the school as a youngster. Earlier reports that his mother, Nancy, may have taught there haven't borne out. 

    "He attended there — that's what I'm led to believe," Malloy said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

    The children — 12 girls and eight boys, all of them 6 or 7 years old — were shot as many as 11 times, H. Wayne Carver, the state medical examiner, said Saturday. It appeared that Lanza had enough weapons and ammunition with him to have killed many, many more.

    Police were analyzing the weaponry, along with a computer they found at the Lanzas' home, for possible leads on the gunman's motive, NBC News' Pete Williams reported.

    Conn. shooting suspect Adam Lanza's father: 'We too are asking why'

    Lanza's parents were divorced, and he lived with his mother, who home-schooled him for part of his childhood, Malloy said.

    Connecticut school shooter was 'very nervous around people'

     "He had a very troubled life," Malloy said. "He never seemed to be a good fit. ... It was a very difficult time for him and his mother."


    Malloy declined to answer whether any documented evidence had been uncovered that Lanza might have been mentally disturbed. At Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, where he enrolled at about 16 in 2008, there was never any indication of trouble, the university said in a statement Sunday.

    Lanza took six classes — including website production, data modeling, Philosophy 101 and ethical theory — and compiled a solid 3.26 grade-point average.  

    Investigators resolutely refused to go into detail about the timing of events Friday during official briefings. But investigators told NBC News that Lanza first killed his mother, an avid gun enthusiast, with her own gun and then took multiple weapons with him as he drove to the school in her car.

    To bypass security, Lanza smashed in a window, they said. He shot and killed Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and Mary Sherlach, 56, a school psychologist, before proceeding to a classroom, where he found the door locked.

    So he moved on to a second classroom, where he killed everyone he found, before doing the same in a third classroom, investigators believe. He then shot himself.

    Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com

    Although he was carrying three weapons, he used only one of them in all of the school killings — a Bushmaster .223-caliber assault-style rifle similar to the one used by the snipers who terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. It was purchased legally, they said. He used one of the handguns to kill himself.

    Authorities haven't said how Nancy Lanza stored the weapons. 

    Marsha Lanza, Nancy Lanza's sister-in-law and Adam Lanza's aunt, said there was a good reason for a divorced woman who grew up with guns to have them in the house: self-defense.

    "She lived alone. She was a female (who) lived alone," Marsha Lanza said.

    Chief Justice Correspondent Pete Williams and Isolde Raftery of NBC News contributed to this report.

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