The Trace

• They Lost Their Kids at Sandy Hook 10 Years Ago. Their Fight Is for Life. December 2, 2022
  Seven-year-old Daniel Barden’s slow, steady drumbeat held together the fledgling family band.  The quartet’s intimate performance brought life to the Best Western hotel in Monticello, New York, where Mark and Jackie Barden had gathered with their children to celebrate a joyous milestone: Daniel’s maternal grandfather was turning 90.  “And I think to myself,” Daniel’s sister, […]
• Who Gives a House to a Gun Researcher? December 1, 2022
  In July 2020, John Lott, the economist who for three decades has provided the statistical veneer for the gun rights movement, received a house in a hilly, picturesque neighborhood in Missoula, Montana. The previous owner, an isolated man named David Strom, had recently died at the age of 79, and left the property to Lott […]
• The Death of Daniel Prude and the Birth of a Thousand Lies November 29, 2022
  50 Child Street *** Valerie Stotts knew what she needed when she called 911 at 6:52 p.m. on March 22, 2020. Her 41-year-old brother-in-law had smoked PCP, and was suffering a psychotic break. He was disoriented and reciting Bible verses. He just then had come to hide out underneath a couch at the family house […]