The United States should feel collective "guilt" for its failure to tackle gun violence, as the country marks ten years since its worst-ever school shooting, at Sandy Hook Elementary, according to President Joe Biden.
"We have a moral obligation to pass and enforce laws that can prevent these things from happening again," Mr Biden said in a statement.
"I am determined to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines like those used at Sandy Hook," he said.
Ten years ago today, 20 primary school children and six school workers at the school in Newtown, Connecticut, were murdered by a 20-year-old gunman in one of the US's worst mass shootings.
The massacre shocked the US and the world, sparked heightened security measures at schools, and renewed a contentious fight for gun control laws that continues a decade later.
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At 9.30am local time on 14 December 2012, Adam Lanza entered the school armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and two pistols after shooting dead his mother at home.
He fired more than 150 times in the corridors and classrooms, killing 20 six-and-seven-year-olds, and six women who worked at the school, before taking his own life.
Ten years on when Nicole Hockley gets into her car, she still looks in the rear view mirror and expects to see the smiling face of her son, Dylan, as he settles into his car seat.
It is difficult for her to fathom that Dylan is gone.
"It's very hard for me to think about the fact that it's been 10 years since Dylan was killed," said Ms Hockley, 51. "It's also just like the blink of an eye."
In the decade since the shooting, that and more violence has ignited debates in the United States over mental health, access to guns and how best to secure schools.
According to a 2014 report by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, Lanza was "completely untreated in the years before the shooting" for psychiatric and physical ailments such as anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even as the national dialogue rages on, there have been other school shootings since Sandy Hook. At Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, last May, 19 children and two teachers were killed, and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, 17 people were killed and 17 more injured.
But tougher national restrictions on guns did not follow until after Uvalde, when the US Congress passed legislation that expanded background checks and reinforced measures to get firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous people.
A stricter law that expired in 2004, banning military-style rifles with large capacity magazines, remains elusive amid opposition from Republicans who cite the constitutional right to gun ownership.
"Civilians should not have access to weapons that we give to armed soldiers to fight foreign enemies," said Connecticut Against Gun Violence executive director Jeremy Stein.
Ms Hockley and other parents of Sandy Hook victims dove into advocacy after their children were murdered, trying to find way sto prevent school shootings through a nonprofit organisation they founded, Sandy Hook Promise.
The group aims to educate students, teachers and others about the warning signs that could help identify would-be mass shooters and to ensure authorities are alerted when such signs are seen.
Over 18 million students and others have participated in one of the group's programmes. At least 11 school shooting plots have been foiled in recent years because of the training Sandy Hook Promise provided, the group says.
On 6 December, Sandy Hook Promise held a 10-year remembrance benefit in New York City. Speakers included former US president Barack Obama, who was in the White House when the Sandy Hook shooting took place.
"Ten years ago, we would have all understood if the families of Sandy Hook Elementary had simply asked for their privacy and closed themselves off from the world," Mr Obama said at thebenefit. "The temptation must have been powerful. But instead you took unimaginable sorrow and channeled it into a righteous cause."
Mark Barden, whose son, Daniel, was killed at Sandy Hook, co-founded Sandy Hook Promise with Ms Hockley.
Mr Barden, 58, has said he has dedicated his life to the group's work as a means of honoring Daniel, whom he felt was destined to do great things in the world because of his "naturally developed sense of compassion and awareness of others."
"It was taken from him. And I feel a very real sense of responsibility to try to fill those enormous shoes in whatever way I can," Ms Barden said.
'The unthinkable loss'
Jenny Hubbard also struggles to believe that 10 years have passed since her six-year-old daughter - Catherine Violet Hubbard - was murdered at Sandy Hook.
"It's a reminder that time is so fleeting," Ms Hubbard says of today's anniversary, which, like every year, will be marked with quiet reflection in the town of just 27,000 people.
"It's been a lifetime because from that day to now, my life is totally different, and yet at the same time it was like it was yesterday," she said.
She remembers Catherine and her eight-year-old son's excitement as she put them on the school bus that morning, with Christmas just around the corner.
"They were over the moon for the holidays. It was one of those mornings where I look back on, and I think it was rushed and chaotic, but it was also one of the best mornings that we had," she recalls.
"The phone call came in that something had happened, and the rest of the day was just a long fog of knowing that something terrible had happened but not understanding the magnitude of what that was," said Ms Hubbard.
At a nearby firehouse, where authorities had taken children to be picked up by their parents after the shooting, Ms Hubbard learned that Catherine had died.
"Most people were just frozen. (It was) the unthinkable loss," she says.
Slowly, over time, Ms Hubbard said she has been able to heal, thanks to accepting the kindness of others and religious faith.
"The first step was just getting out of bed, and that was because of my son. I had to get up because he had a right to live his life. Then every single day, there was just one more step that I would take," she said.
Difficult days include the first school day of every year and when other mass shootings occur, like at Uvalde.
"I know that the journey that the families are about to take is not easy, and it's lonely, and it's dark at times," said Ms Hubbard.
A circular memorial pool honoring the Sandy Hook victims opened near the school last month. Single white roses rested on each name this week.
Nearby, sits the 34-acre Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary that Ms Hubbard founded in honor of her daughter, who loved animals.
She remembers Catherine as "fiercely determined," "gentle" and "compassionate."
Sometimes, she finds herself wanting to know what 16-year-old Catherine would be like, but tries to stop herself.
"I will never understand why that's not possible in my life, but I carry with me the six years that she shared with me and the memories," Ms Hubbard.
Nicole Rinei Hawke, 17, was in a second-grade Sandy Hook classroom the day of the shooting. She can still hear the deafening gunshots and remains thankful for the poise her teacher maintained in keeping the kids safe. Her voice still tightens in recalling that day, when with each pause in the shooting she thought "it's going to be us next."
Nicole said she feels anger that 10 years on, school shootings are "actually becoming more frequent than less."
"It's definitely made me an angrier person, politically at least," she said.
