More than 60 Harrison residents gathered in the public library on Monday to watch a screening of the 2016 film “Newtown” and to speak with one of the film’s producers, Marie Cuomo Cole.
The film, which documents the shooting of 20 children, ages 6 and 7, and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and the emotional trauma that ensued, was featured in the Sundance Film Festival and the South by Southwest Film Festival. The film was directed and co-produced by Kim Snyder and released in January 2016, three years after the shooting in December 2012.
“It’s a film about grief and about trauma and coping as a community,” Cuomo Cole told the crowd, adding that besides the issue of gun control, community resilience was one of the biggest themes which she hoped to address in producing the documentary.
According to Galina Chernykh, the library’s executive director, the screening was set up several months ago; but the timing of the event is appropriate, as an ongoing discussion about L&L Sports, a gun store that opened on Halstead Avenue in early November, continues to draw attention. An online petition on Change.org protesting the location of the store, which is less than 1,000 feet from Parsons Memorial Elementary School, has nearly 3,500 signatures as of press time.
“I think the response has been, at the onset, prudent,” Cuomo Cole said. “It’s important to check out the sellers. There are many bona fide, acceptable sellers and there are those that are not, so I think that the caution is well-supported.”
Whether because of the local gun store issue or because of the degree of emotional suffering the film depicts, the screening drew tears among the crowd. “I feel like Newtown could have been Harrison; it could have been Rye,” Cuomo Cole said. “It could have been any-and-every-town, U.S.A. I think that’s what really struck so many people about the tragedy.”
Cuomo Cole is no stranger to mass school shootings having previously produced a documentary on the shootings at Virginia Tech. In 2010, she was a producer on the film “Living for 32,” a documentary about the push for gun control legislation after the 2007 shooting of 32 students at the university.
A similar surge in gun control laws occurred after the Newtown shooting.
Just a month after the Sandy Hook tragedy, Cuomo Cole’s brother, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed the Safe Act into law. That law widened the definition of assault rifles, put stricter limits on magazine capacities, and put tighter restrictions on the background check system in the state.
The Safe Act also included an amendment to the Mental Hygiene Law, requiring mental health professionals to report patients who they considered could be hazardous to themselves or others if they possessed a gun. Adam Lanza, the 20 year-old Sandy Hook shooter who also killed himself, had been diagnosed with several behavioral and cognitive disorders, including Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and sensory-integration disorder, according to his father, Peter Lanza.
The owner of L&L Sports, Louis Zacchio, has maintained that he abides by each of the state and federal gun regulations as they apply to his store, and therefore should not be under scrutiny.
Harrison’s Mayor Ron Belmont, a Republican, has said that the town does not have the authority to put any additional restrictions on the storefront, as gun laws are regulated at the state and federal levels.
Belmont attended the Monday night screening of “Newtown,” as did Republican council members Fred Sciliano and Marlane Amelio.
