Excerpts from Newtown editorials from around the nation:

The Hartford Courant:

Stay angry. Remember how you felt this weekend. Don’t let the faces of those children go until meaningful, actual steps are taken to make this a safer and less violent country.

President Obama came to Newtown on Sunday and said we can no longer tolerate these mass shootings, we must change.

He offered no specifics; but specifics must be forthcoming.

His press officer had said Friday that now was not the time to talk of policy responses such as gun control. We disagree; now is exactly the time, before we fall back into a collective stupor in which we don’t do anything but hope it doesn’t happen again. If the brutal execution of 20 children and six educators doesn’t spur meaningful action, we are not worthy of their memory.

The Los Angeles Times:

One can’t help but be struck by the fact that on the same day as the Newtown massacre, a deranged man in China, where guns are very hard to obtain, slashed 22 children with a knife outside an elementary school. None of them died.

Much as we’d like to see a modicum of sanity in U.S. gun laws, it doesn’t seem forthcoming. The idea that the Republican-dominated House would do anything to restrict gun ownership is a vain fantasy. And President Obama has thus far proven himself unwilling to expend the kind of political capital necessary to move meaningful gun reform into the forefront of the national debate. Hug your children and protect them as best you can; politicians are unlikely to do so.

The Chicago Tribune:

What all of us can do right now is focus on the stories of these lives cut short. We can be inspired by the simplicity of the children, and the service of the educators who died trying to protect them. We can rededicate ourselves to the cause that united both groups – education of the young – and trust that education someday may bring the peace that legislation and public fury have not. We say this not in surrender to the murderers, but with faith that there must be a way to pre-empt their inhumanities. Education and its progeny, empathy and uplift, may succeed where all else has failed.

The Philadelphia Daily News:

Also sick: The fact that the gun lobby continues to throw dollars at willing and complacent elected officials – let’s call them what they are, congressional whores – who close their eyes and let this happen month after month, year after year.