Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory Video: Experts Debunk Hoax Claims

Conspiracy theories alleging the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax have stormed the Internet in the last week. With one "truther" video amassing over 10 million views in just 10 days, conspiracy theory experts are now debunking its claims, saying the video argues its points through questions rather than answers.

The viral video, titled "The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed," was posted Jan. 7 to the YouTube channel ThinkOutsideTheTV. The 30-minute video assembles random assortments of news clips to draw attention to the "inconsistencies" in the media's coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting, a similar line of reasoning used by Florida professor James Tracy in the Newtown conspiracy theory he wrote on his blog, memoryholeblog.com

"This is a simple, logical video. No aliens, holigrams [sic], rituals or anything like that, just facts," says the video in its first seconds.

"The video begins with something that really everybody can accept -- 'We are just raising questions,'" Benjamin Radford, author of "Media Mythmakers," told The Huffington Post. "The whole subject is framed like, 'Don't look at us, we're not saying this crazy stuff, we're just asking questions.'"

Of course, that's exactly what the video is: Questions, and nothing more.

"All they offer are tantalizing 'could be's," Radford said.

"The classic conspiracy theorist sees the hidden hand in everything. Nothing is as it seems. There's something bigger that's going on. They dont know where it is, but they are willing to tantalize people and throw out any number of suggestions, which are oftentimes contradictory," he said.

Some of the questions raised in the video:

How did Adam Lanza's AR-15 rifle get locked in his trunk? (This was later proven by authorities to be an extra shotgun)

Were the grieving Newtown citizens really just "crisis actors"? (Some "truthers" targeted hero Gene Rosen as the prime example due Rosen sharing a name with an actor registered with the Screen Actors Guild. Rosen is actually a 69-year-old retired psychologist; the SAG member "truthers" have mistaken him for is 62-years-old)

Why were memorial websites seemingly set up before the shooting occurred on Dec. 14? ("Google search result entries are imprecise and do not always accurately reflect the date on which the reference material first appeared on the web," notes David Mikkelson on myth debunking site Snopes).

Victims' parents didn't express the proper level of grief (Not really a question as much as it is unsubstantiated conjecture based on contextual media coverage and news editing).

"What I think we are looking at in the video is an attempt to find evidence to fit a preexisting narrative, that the government is or is quickly becoming a tyranny and that the only thing stopping the government from terrorizing the nation is that the populace is armed," Robert Blaskiewicz, writer for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, said in an email to the Huffington Post.

Once again, this is similar to the reasoning employed in Tracy's conspiracy theory, as he claimed the shooting was part of a cover-up to make it easier for liberal lawmakers to push new gun control legislature through congress.

According to Blaskiewicz, this sort of line of inquiry is always doomed to failure.

"The only possible answer at the end of that process of investigation is some sort of omnipotent puppet master who controls everything. In this case, it's the government, but it's often Jews, the New World Order, the other political party, the Illuminati, Masons, or even inter-dimensional mind-controlling reptilian space aliens who impersonate political leaders."