'Gun truthers' level abuse, threats at victims of US massacres in wake of Orlando slaughter
It has become an ugly reality in a world too often beset by pointless tragedies.
As families of the victims of the Orlando nightclub massacre struggle to come to terms with grief, they find themselves unwillingly thrown into the centre of political storm.
Reports are now emerging suggesting some gun advocates are deliberately inflicting fresh emotional wounds on the families of those affected by the US’ countless massacres.
Death threats, insults and the repeated insistence that their loved ones never existed, and that their slayings never happened, have been levelled at the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.
Orlando appears to have sparked a new wave of abuse.
The ABC reports a torrid hate campaign has started, following the 50 deaths in Orlando on June 12.
"F**k you!! Your child never died at Sandy Hook,” reads an online message unearthed by Foreign Correspondent, one among thousands, directed at the parents of one slain child.
"Where's Noah going to die next?" reads another.
Death threats have been leveled against the families of some victims.
Lenny Pozner the father of a Sandy Hook victim and the recipient of abuse from conspiracy theorists says he has been forced to regularly insist his son was a real person and not a creation by an "anti-gun lobby".
"I have to absolutely defend the memory of my son - I have no choice," he told the ABC.
"The JFK conspiracy theory in the US is very accepted. Conspiracy theories erase history, they erase our memories, and how will this event (Sandy Hook) be remembered a hundred years from now?"
In 2015 a Soto family spokesman told Yahoo7: "We do not understand the goal of these targeted attacks on our family. We have gone through a horrific and very public event and for people to mock our pain is unimaginable.
"There are those that say Sandy Hook was a hoax and it never happened, we wish it never happened, but it did and Vicki is gone along with 25 other beautiful souls.
"If all these people who spent time harnessing and threatening our family took that time and used it to volunteer the world would be a better place."
Photographic and video evidence of the crimes does little to persuade the "truthers". In their minds, the images show actors and sets, not victims and crime scenes.
While many react angrily to news of violent crimes, these conspiracy enthusiasts react angrily not to the crime, but to the news.
Led by the likes of Alex Jones, an US internet radio shock jock with a legion of fans and most famous for a railing against Piers Morgan for his perceived role as the vanguard of a new British conquest of North America, the truthers enjoy high profile support.
Fringe media personalities are not alone in their public denial of such tragedies.
Florida Atlantic University fired School of Communication and Multimedia Studies professor James Tracy early this year for his claims that the Sandy Hook massacre had been fabricated.
Sandy Hook, it seems, has become the rallying point for those who seek to blame the surviving victims of massacres for their political fall out.
It is not just an American issue. While the gun debate in Australia is widely considered settled the example set by John Howard’s gun restrictions has been debated in the wake of recent US massacres.
Because Port Arthur was the flash point for the nation’s gun controls, it also becomes the rallying point for those who will argue at any cost against the laws.
Believe it or not, there is no shortage of Australians who will go to their graves insisting no one went to their grave at Port Arthur.
Hopefully, those opinions will remain largely private here though.
It is not the first time the loved ones have spoken out. Vicki Soto was considered a hero of the Sandy Hook tragedy, sacrificing herself to save her students.
It did not save her family from the truthers.
