Newtown quietly marks anniversary of Sandy Hook school shooting

Flags are flying at half-staff across Connecticut to mark the third anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 26 people, including 20 children, were killed in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. But there will be no mention of the shootings inside the town's elementary schools on Monday — the first time the anniversary of the massacre has fallen on school day.

Grief counselors were dispatched to all seven of Newtown's public schools, including Sandy Hook, which has been temporarily housed in a retrofitted school in nearby Monroe, Conn., since the Dec. 14, 2012, tragedy.

An interfaith gathering was scheduled for Monday night at Trinity Church, where local religious leaders will lead a special memorial service for community members. But as has been the case in previous years, the town is not planning any events to mark the anniversary, opting to allow families to grieve privately.

Instead, Newtown residents have spent the last month honoring Sandy Hook victims by participating in “26 days of kindness,” with a dedicated Twitter feed posting a tweet per day in memory of each of the lives lost.

Earlier this month, the group paused its “26 days of kindness” to express its solidarity with the victims of the San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting.

At least 555 children younger than 12 have been killed by gunshots in the three years since the mass shooting in Newtown, according to NBC News analysis published Monday. That figure — which represents an average of one child every other day — includes both intentional and accidental gun deaths, though it’s “likely significantly lower than the true number of child gun deaths” because “suicides often are not covered by news media and other gun deaths sometimes go unreported.”

Outside the National Rifle Association’s headquarters in Fairfax, Va., gun control activists held a vigil for the victims — and urged Congress to stand up to the gun rights lobby.

Among them was Andy Parker, whose daughter, WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker, was shot and killed along with her cameraman during a live broadcast in Roanoke. Parker has since become a vocal critic of the NRA.

Meanwhile, Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son, Dylan, was among the Sandy Hook shooting victims, has been visiting schools around the country with Sandy Hook Promise, promoting school safety and challenging students to help prevent gun violence.

Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, was also killed in the rampage, has spent the last three years confronting conspiracy theorists who claim the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged by “crisis actors” hired by the U.S. government to promote gun control.

Pozner has often countered the so-called hoaxers by posting photos of his son — and his death certificate.

“I know that the more garbage that is out there, the more it ages over time, the more the myth becomes accepted as a disgusting historical fact that tries to dismiss the existence of my child,” Pozner said in an interview published by Vice.com. “I mean, damn it, his life had value. He existed. He was real. How dare they.”

Pozner says even tried to meet face-to-face with one of them, Wolfgang Halbig, an Orlando, Fla., “school safety and security expert” who launched a website to “expose” the truth about the Sandy Hook shootings:

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