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After facing recent backlash while participating in a Reddit AMA, former UFC champion Ronda Rousey has apologized for being a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist over a decade ago.
In an apology posted to social media, Ronda Rousey labeled her decision to retweet a Sandy Hook conspiracy theory on X, formerly Twitter, 11 years ago as the “most regrettable decision of her life.”
“I can’t say how many times I’ve redrafted this apology over the last 11 years. How many times I’ve convinced myself it wasn’t the right time or that I’d be causing even more damage by giving it,” Rousey wrote in her apologetic statement.
“But 11 years ago I made the single most regrettable decision of my life. I watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on Twitter. I didn’t even believe it, but was so horrified at the truth that I was grasping for an alternative fiction to cling to instead. I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done.”
Rousey — who participated in a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) earlier this week to promote her new graphic novel — also marveled at how her Sandy Hook post seemingly lipped under the “media’s radar,” allowing her to go this long without apologizing.
“By some miracle it seemingly slipped under the media’s radar, I was never asked about it so I never spoke of it again, afraid that calling attention to it would have the opposite of the intended effect—it could increase the views of those conspiracy videos, and selfishly, inform even more people I was ignorant, self absorbed, and tone deaf enough to share one in the first place.”
“So I convinced myself that apologizing would just reopen the wound for no other reason than me selfishly trying to make myself feel better, that I would hurt those suffering even more and possibly lead more people down the black hole of conspiracy bulls— by it being brought up again just so I could try to shake the label of being a ‘Sandy Hook truther.”
In a remarkable turn of remorse, Rousey says that her actions mean that she deserves to be “hated, labeled, detested, resented.”
“But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented, and worse for it. I deserve to lose out on every opportunity, I should have been canceled, I would have deserved it. I still do.”
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The tragedy of Sandy Hook has been back in the public consciousness in recent weeks as Democratic Vice Presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a gun owner and hunter, stopped accepting donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 2017 due to shootings such as Sandy Hook, the Las Vegas shooting, etc.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was carried out by 20-year-old Adam Lanza on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. It resulted in the deaths of 26 people: 20 children (aged six and seven) and six adult staff members. Lanza, who also killed his mother prior to the shooting, took his own life as police arrived on the scene.
Despite the horror of Sandy Hook, far right-wingers — such as Alex Jones, whose false Sandy Hook claims have left him bankrupt via lawsuit — have turned the shooting into a conspiracy theory, incorrectly and insidiously suggesting that it was a hoax.