Did that really happen?

Still in shock over the events of yesterday.  A friend of mine and I had been talking about our blogs, and she had shared the Douglas Mallette video link.  I was in the middle of watching that when I jumped back to facebook to see if she had said anything else and instead I saw a post from another facebook friend about how she was going off line to light a candle for Sandy Hook.  I was like, "Who is Sandy Hook?"...
Sandy Hook is 20 children, between the ages of 5 and 10, murdered, slaughtered.  This fucked with my head and my heart so much I sought the comforts of mother nature and headed to a local park to just breath.

What does this mean for us, our culture, that has always omitted children from violence like this?  By dinner time yesterday, I had sort of pulled it together, but I know we, as a nation, will never "get over" this wound.