Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The perpetrator, Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother before murdering 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and later committed suicide.^[1] A number of fringe figures have promoted conspiracy theories that doubt or dispute what occurred at Sandy Hook. Various conspiracy theorists have claimed, for example, that the massacre was actually orchestrated by the U.S. government as part of an elaborate plot to promote stricter gun control laws.^[2]

The more common conspiracy theory, adopted initially by James Fetzer, James Tracy, and others, and further popularized by Alex Jones, denied that the massacre actually occurred, asserting that it was faked. The massacre was described by Fetzer and Tracy as a classified training exercise involving members of federal and local law enforcement, the news media, and crisis actors, which they claim was modeled on Operation Closed Campus, an Iowa school-shooting drill that was canceled in 2011 amid threats and public outcry. Jones described the shooting incident as "synthetic, completely fake with actors; in my view, manufactured [...] it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors."^[3][4]

No evidence supports the conspiracy theories, which make a number of implausible claims.^[5][6][7] Moreover, many Sandy Hook conspiracy theories contradict one another.^[6] A number of sources have published articles debunking various claims put forward by conspiracy theorists.^{[6][8][9][10]} In 2018, the parents of several children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting launched a lawsuit against Jones and other authors of conspiracy videos for defamation, accusing them of engaging in a campaign of "false, cruel, and dangerous assertions".^[11] In 2019, Jones reversed his stance and stated that the massacre was real.^[12]