Six survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who were first graders during the tragic 2012 attack that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, shared their reflections on Good Morning America as they prepare to graduate from high school.
Perhaps most strikingly, they expressed how disheartened they are that nothing has really changed to curb gun violence since the murders.
You can hear what they said in the video below.
Sandy Hook survivors share memories ahead of graduationyoutu.be
Student Henry Terifay was especially critical of people—predominantly conservatives—who call for "thoughts and prayers" after mass shootings yet fail to advocate for comprehensive gun control.
He said:
“We don’t want ‘I’m sorrys’ and ‘This is so terrible it happened to you.' It’s past that. It’s happened too many times."
"Your prayers honestly don’t mean anything. It doesn’t help me. I’ve had to deal with this for 10 years. It’ll never get easier no matter how many times I talk about it, and honestly it’s just time for it to change. No more ‘sorrys.’”
Terifay later said he once believed the shooting "would shock people and wake everybody up, but it just keeps happening over and over and over again.”
Emma Ehrens recounted the harrowing experience of seeing the gunman enter her classroom and standing next to her. She described watching her friends “drop” before she and others managed to flee. She said she and her fellow classmates "saw bodies in the hallways and doors blown off the hinges" and then "just ran and ran and ran out of the school.”
Reflecting on subsequent school shootings, such as the 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers, Ehrens emphasized that victims’ families need more than just sympathy from the masses:
“They just want change. This should never have happened to us; this should never have happened to them. I just think people in power, or people that have the power to make change, should do it instead of the 17-, 18-year-olds trying to do their work for them.”
Lilly Wasilnak was among the students who expressed their intent to advocate against gun violence in their future careers in therapy, law, and politics and shared her apprehensions about one day sending her own children to school:
"As unfortunate as it is, it’s going to happen to someone else and it’s going to keep happening to someone else until people like us have to make the change."
She later said she has "mixed emotions" about graduating from high school while processing the reality that so many of her own classmates are not alive to celebrate this milestone:
“There is a whole chunk of our class missing, so going into graduation we have very mixed emotions. We’re trying to be excited for ourselves and this accomplishment that we’ve worked so hard for, but also those who aren’t able to share it with us who should have been able to.”
Meanwhile, classmate Grace Fischer said she believed the biggest change needed was “regulations on AR-style assault weapons," adding:
“I think one of the hardest things is getting people to see eye to eye on it. I think that stops a lot of regulation and legislation, which unfortunately is costing more and more lives every day."
There has not been a significant effort to pass gun control legislation in quite some time, adding to the interview's significance.
In 2022, Congress passed the most recent and comprehensive gun safety laws, influenced by years of advocacy from Sandy Hook campaigners. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act achieved several goals, including enhancing background checks and closing the "boyfriend loophole" that allowed unmarried partners with a history of domestic violence to acquire firearms.
However, many believe the legislation fell short. It did not mandate background checks for all gun sales or ban assault-style weapons, as President Joe Biden and his administration have consistently urged Congress to implement.
Many share the students' pain and reignited the call for legislation to address a nationwide epidemic of gun violence.
The Sandy Hook shooting attracted a seemingly endless number of conspiracy theories about the event, many of them promoted by Infowars host Alex Jones, who recently claimed that he was "duped by someone" and now the government is trying to shut down his studio.
Jones' meltdown came as relatives of the victims of the shooting urged a bankruptcy judge to liquidate Jones' media company, including Infowars, rather than allow him to reorganize his business. This move comes as they aim to collect $1.5 billion in lawsuit verdicts against him.
Jones' impact on the discourse surrounding the shooting cannot be understated given that for years he's claimed the shooting was orchestrated by leftists and government operatives to advance gun control.
In 2022, journalist Elizabeth Williamson published Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, which analyzed the effect that conspiracy theories had on families who lost their children.
Williamson also interviewed conspiracy theorists, including Kelley Watt, a grandmother of two from Tulsa, Oklahoma who sparked outrage after she said she is "proud" to harass families of the victims.
Watt claimed she spent a significant part of the last decade "researching" mass shootings, concluding that mass shootings are little more than "false flag" operations designed to strike fear and convince people to support comprehensive gun control legislation.
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