I will never forget the date of Friday, December 14, 2012.
I was 12 years old at the time, a few months into my first year of middle school. I remember that morning I had a math test - something that would occupy the mind of any twelve-year-old. I don't remember how I did on the test, but all I know is that once I returned home, I - like millions of other Americans - learned the horrific news of what had occurred in a small town just like the one I lived in, and only one state over from where I lived.
On the morning of Friday, December 14, 2012, a disturbed 20-year-old recluse named Adam Peter Lanza fatally shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle as she slept in her home in Newtown, Connecticut.
Adam then loaded his car with multiple weapons - including a Saiga-12 shotgun, two handguns, and a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, along with over 200 rounds of ammunition.
Lanza then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School - where he had once been a student - and, in a bloody rampage that lasted barely five minutes, mercilessly and indiscriminately gunned down the principal, five teachers, and 20 first-grade students between the ages of 6 and 7 years old.
After his rifle jammed from repeated rapid firing, Lanza discarded the weapon and used his Glock pistol to fire a single shot into his head, dying among the bodies of his victims.
Five minutes.
154 shots.
That was all it took for twenty-six innocent lives to be extinguished, and for America to be changed forever.
The massacre at Sandy Hook remains the deadliest mass shooting in an American grade school, and at the time it was the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history. However - in a statistic that grimly reflects the scope of the gun violence epidemic in the US - it has been twice surpassed, and now remains the fourth-deadliest mass shooting in US history.
I remember the exact moment I heard about the shooting. I was in my father's car, listening to NPR, when the announcer mentioned - in a grim, monotone voice that still stands out in my memory - that 20 children and six adults had been killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
The radio then cut to President Barack Obama's address to the nation in the aftermath of the shooting. Amid the clicking sounds of cameras, I remember President Obama struggling to maintain his composure as he tried to comfort a wounded nation. I still remember one line from his speech that stands out: "As a country, this has happened too many times".
America was, even in 2012, no stranger to mass shootings or even school shootings, but never before had 6 and 7-year-old children been gunned down en-masse as they sat in their classroom. The thought was so horrible that hardly anyone had even considered the possibility of it happening.
And almost immediately, there was widespread demand across the country - even from pro-gun politicians - to implement sensible and meaningful gun control laws. This wasn't a new demand, but the massacre at Sandy Hook - perhaps more than any other shooting - revealed to the world the true horrors of gun violence and galvanized the gun control movement across the nation.
Yet, even now, the gun lobby fought back hard. The National Rifle Association (NRA) staunchly and stubbornly fought every attempt to implement the slightest bit of gun legislation on both the state and federal level.
NRA supporters and spokespersons propagated outlandish conspiracy theories, claiming the federal government was trying to disarm the American people in preparation for a tyrannical, globalist "New World Order". They shouted and screeched about how "violent video games", not guns, were to blame for mass shootings. And they loudly proclaimed that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun".
Most disgustingly, some NRA supporters and spokespersons even suggested that the massacre at Sandy Hook was nothing more than a hoax; a government "false flag" intended to serve as a pretext for mass gun confiscation.
In the end, while the state of Connecticut itself did pass major gun control legislation - restricting the sale of AR-15-style rifles and limiting magazine capacities to 10-rounds - on the federal level absolutely nothing has been done.
In 2013, a Democrat-led attempt at passing a comprehensive gun control bill - which would, among other things, reinstate the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, expand federal background checks, and prohibit the sale or manufacture of 10 different types of firearms. Even then, all firearms owned before the bill went into effect would be grandfathered in, and, contrary to NRA fearmongering, there were absolutely ZERO provisions for gun confiscation of any type.
In the end, despite backing from one Republican senator, the 2013 gun control bill was defeated in the Senate, with 15 Democrats joining all but one Republican in voting against the measure.
Even in the face of dozens of dead children, the American gun lobby remained as powerful as ever, stubbornly refusing to accept any solutions to the problem they had enabled to run amok.
And here we are. Nine years later. Nine long years in which countless more mass shootings - including two which surpassed each other within a year to each become the deadliest in US history - have occurred practically nonstop. And still, nothing has been done. Even though the NRA has lost some of its power in the years since Sandy Hook, the gun lobby's grip on Washington is still as tight as ever.
It is clear there is only one way to fix this problem. The only way to pass gun control measures is to remove from office those who are blocking it. And it's not like the gun lobby is following the will of its constituents, either. Over 90% of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases, including nearly 80% of NRA members.
Since the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2018, they've passed countless gun control measures - all of which have stalled in the Senate, where NRA-backed Republicans have consistently blocked them from even coming to a vote. Even though Democrats took control of the Senate by a razor-thin margin in 2020, the Republican minority (and even several Democrats) have threatened to filibuster any gun control bill passed by the House. Congress is, yet again, at a deadlock over the issue of gun control - a deadlock that has been ongoing for almost 30 years and has cost thousands of lives.
The only way to break this deadlock is to vote these obstructionists out. And as much as the gun lobby has hampered efforts to enact meaningful gun legislation, the unelectability of Democrats has - above all - been a bulwark to progress.
So - to any Democrats hoping to run for office in the near future - I implore you to campaign WISELY. Don't run on petty virtue-signaling nonsense, or divisive SJW identity-politics. Don't campaign on stupid, unpopular, and unwinnable issues like "abolishing the police", banning the death penalty for heinous murderers, funding gender studies in Pakistan, or demanding white people pay reparations for the crimes of ancestors as a sort of collective punishment.
Don't make stupid statements like Beto O'Rourke did, when he told Texas voters "Hell yes, we're coming to take your AR-15" - a policy which absolutely nobody supports.
Don't be like Bernie Sanders, who made it a point to say he wanted to allow the Boston Bomber to be allowed to vote from prison and then doubled-down when confronted on that issue.
And don't be like Tulsi Gabbard, who spent her campaign making apologetics for dictators like Bashar al-Assad and spreading war crimes denialism.
If you want to enact change, you have to speak to constituents on the issues they care about, and gun violence is absolutely an issue that people care about and want to see fixed. If you don't appeal to your constituents or spend your time promoting actual issues, you have nobody but yourselves to blame for your lack of progress - especially when it comes to gun violence.
You have a chance to make a real difference. Don't let us down again.
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In memoriam:
Rachel D'Avino, 29
Dawn Hochsprung, 47
Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Lauren Rousseau, 30
Mary Sherlach, 56
Victoria Leigh Soto, 27
Charlotte Bacon, 6
Daniel Barden, 7
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Dylan Hockley, 6
Madeleine Hsu, 6
Catherine Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Emilie Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison Wyatt, 6
Nancy Lanza, 52
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