Connecticut lawmakers joined survivors and family members of gun violence victims Thursday at the nation’s Capitol to mark the 12th anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
The incident, which took place on Dec. 14, 2012, was perpetrated by a 20-year-old man who killed his mother at home before going to Sandy Hook Elementary where he then killed 20 first graders and six educators.
Thursday’s event followed the annual vigil held Wednesday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington to honor the American victims and survivors of gun violence since December 2012.
The event coincided with an announcement by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong of a new multi-state partnership including Connecticut and the AGs of 16 other states to hold “irresponsible firearms industry members accountable for their devastating impact on gun violence through civil enforcement of state laws.”
The coalition is the first of its kind, according to Tong’s office.
“We are launching a groundbreaking multistate campaign to step up our enforcement and harness the power of our civil statutes to hold bad actors in the firearms industry accountable for dangerous misconduct,” Tong said in a statement. “I’m committed to using every ounce of my authority to keep Connecticut families safe.”
The states joining the coalition share the goal of targeting firearms manufacturers, distributors, and sellers for enforcement when their business practices result in unlawful sales, gun trafficking, and other outcomes that put lives at risk.
US Sen. Chris Murphy, who has been a vocal advocate for gun safety since the Sandy Hook shootings, delivered remarks on the US Senate floor Thursday and also spoke at the earlier press event.
“ This is always a heavy day, but a very important day. I want to thank the team that puts this week together,” Murphy said. “But really, I want to thank all of the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who are standing up here who have found a way to both deal and process with this immense grief that none of us who serve in elected positions can ever understand and do it.”
Murphy said it was hard for those affected to think any progress has been made, not only through the grief of their own losses but recently with the electoral loss and comments that had been made by both the President Elect and the Vice President Elect about gun violence and shootings in the nation.
“Just over two years ago, we, for the first time, all of us collectively broke 30 years of inaction in Congress. And we passed the first significant anti-gun violence bill in 30 years in this Congress, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, right? Now that was a victory to celebrate on that day, but it wouldn’t have mattered,” Murphy said. “If the promise we made didn’t come true. We shouldn’t be shy about celebrating that since we passed the bipartisan safer communities act, gun murders have fallen by 20 percent in this country.”
During the press event, each Connecticut lawmaker recommitted themselves to honoring the memories of those lost and to continue the fight to bring about gun safety reform.
Survivors and victims’ family members told their personal stories of loss from a mother from Arizona whose son was killed by an unintentional gunshot at a friend’s sleepover to a women from Mexico who told the story of how her young son was killed in Mexico by guns that had been illegally brought into her country from the US.
Cali Taylor, who was four at the time of the of the Sandy Hook shootings, told the story of how her mother, a second-grade teacher at Sandy Hook, managed to walk out of the school on the day of the shooting with her students. But she added, “Make no mistake, their lives were changed forever.”
Taylor recalled as she went through school life she was always afraid that someone was going to climb in through a window and harm her.
“ Lockdown drills and school not being a place of safety is all my generation’s ever known,” she said “This is not the way it should be. We have the power to change this for our future generations and should pour our energy into making not only schools but our communities safe places free from gun violence. I want to live in a society that places a higher value on children than guns. I stand with other students from Newtown and beyond to urge Congress to make passing lifesaving gun bills a priority so that guns are no longer the number one killer of children and teens in America.
“ In these 12 years, a whole new generation has come of age. The young people who were at Sandy Hook, four years old, are able to vote. They are going to make a difference. A whole new generation is there to fight gun violence,” Blumenthal said.