Newly unearthed photo of heroic teacher and her class reminds us that there are some for whom there will NEVER be another Christmas.

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

The photo shows a smiling Soto along with her full class and another Newton victim, teacher Anne Marie Murphy. The photo was taken last fall. Soto, 27, was killed trying to protect her class from the gunman, hiding them in cabinets and a classroom closet to save them from the eyes of Adam Lanza. When he came into her classroom, she told him her children were in the gym. 

Murphy is another hero: she was found with her arms around one of the slain children. 

The photo also includes victims Dylan Hockley, Allison Wyatt, Jesse Lewis, Avielle Richman, all 6 years old.

I know that it is the holiday and that all of us want to think about spending time with our families and forgetting the troubled year that it is now coming to a close, however I also believe that it is important that we not allow the passage of time, and the distractions of the holidays, make us forget the tragedy that happened just ten days ago.

THAT is what the NRA and their conservative supporters are hoping for. If they can just keep politicians from doing anything of substance in the next few weeks they hope that this whole thing will just blow over with no gun control laws on the books.

And to that end they are also working double time to divert attention away from the easy access of guns in this country to Adam Lanza's mental health.

One of the phrases I have heard repeated by any number of Republican surrogates is that Adam Lanza's mental illness was well known, But NO, no it wasn't. In fact it is STILL not known what his exact diagnosis might have been.

And if it turns out that Adam did indeed have Asperger's Syndrome then we still know NOTHING about why he killed his mother and murdered those babies in that school.

I have worked with a number of children diagnosed with Aspergers and let me tell you that they may be the least violent group I have ever had to deal with. They are often quiet, painfully introverted, and socially inept, but NOT violent in most cases.

And here let me lay a little more knowledge on you. Just because a child is properly diagnosed with a mental illness of some kind, and receiving treatment, that is NO guarantee that they will not self harm, or harm others.

However it is ABSOLUTELY true that without  access to his mother's arsenal Adam Lanza would have remained relatively harmless. Or at the very least incapable of taking so many lives with such impunity.

So let us not be distracted from the real issue, which is that access to military style weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing human beings is far too easy in this country, and that so long as people who should never have access to them, get access to them, we will continue to see these kinds of massacres for years to come.