Sandy Hook survivors reveal who they’ll be voting for in November during their first time at the polls
A report reveals that survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting will be eligible to vote for president for the first time in November.
Grace Fischer, Emma Ehrens, Lilly Wasilnak and Matt Holden are all 18 years old and were all in first grade when the shooting occurred.
Almost 12 years later, they both spoke to NBC News about their plans to elect Vice President Kamala Harris as president.
The interviews come months after the then-recently graduated teens visited Harris at the White House in June, a week before she announced her candidacy.
When asked about their decision, the four students, who previously attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, cited the candidate’s stance on gun laws as the main reason.
Pictured: Sandy Hook shooting survivors Emma Ehrens, Grace Fischer, Henry Terifay and Lilly Wasilnak meet with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House in June
Several people have told NBC News they plan to vote for Harris in November, now that they are 18.
“To me it’s a no-brainer,” survivor Wasilnak, 18, said after meeting with Harris at the White House on National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
“It’s a huge turning point in our lives,” added Fischer, who was just 6 years old when 20-year-old Adam Lanza brutally gunned down 20 classmates and six teachers on Dec. 14, 2012.
She told the station how coming of age at such a monumental moment has given her and others hope that they can create change after spending most of their childhood watching.
She, like others, survived Lanza’s attack by remaining silent in the classroom as the 20-year-old unloaded several weapons his mother had legally purchased.
Activists at the time hoped the event would lead to changes in gun laws. Since then, gun laws have been upheld in every state.
Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the expiration of the federal ban on assault rifles. And Harris, like other Democrats, is campaigning for a renewed, nationwide ban.
“The country was forced to look at this problem in a visceral, horrible way,” gun safety activist Emma Brown said of the seeds planted by the school shooting, which remains the second deadliest in history after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
“The loss of all those children in their classrooms was so unimaginable and so devastating that even the politicians and the people who pretended that this wasn’t a growing problem in this country couldn’t deny it,” she continued.
“It’s a huge turning point in our lives,” said Fischer, who was just 6 when 20-year-old Adam Lanza brutally gunned down 20 of her classmates and six teachers in 2012.
Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the federal ban on assault weapons expiring — and Harris, like other Democrats, is campaigning for a renewed national policy
Their efforts to pass a broader ban have failed — a failure that survivors hope Harris can rectify if she succeeds in winning the Oval Office.
Brown is the director of Giffords, a gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who is also a shooting survivor.
Their attempts to pass a broader ban have failed, and survivors hope Harris can rectify this failure if she wins the Oval Office.
Ehrens, who was standing next to Lanza when he gunned down her classmates, told the station how disappointed she is by the lack of change since the shooting, a disappointment compounded by the seemingly endless stream of similar incidents since then.
“We were told this would change everything,” she said.
“It breaks your heart a little more each time.”
The group had already met Harris when she was vice president, just before her graduation, and during that meeting they shared their personal stories about that day.
Harris in turn told them, “None of you should have had this experience.”
The candidate has since said that student safety in schools is a top priority, calling for a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, and for universal background checks.
Broken pieces of tempered glass cover chairs and stools at Sandy Hook Elementary School after the December 2012 shooting
No motive has ever been established as to why the shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 20 first-graders and six teachers
“I’m casting a vote for the 26 who can’t,” one survivor said of those killed. Meanwhile, school shootings continue, with two students and two teachers killed earlier this month at Apalachee High School in Georgia
Since announcing her campaign in July, Harris has also said she supports laws that would allow a family member or police to seek a court order to temporarily seize a gun if they believe the owner could cause harm.
Speculation about such laws was revived after Lanza’s killing spree, due to the numerous semi-automatic weapons he used and the fact that Lanza was old enough to carry a rifle at the time of the shooting in the state’s eyes.
Lanza eventually used guns his mother had purchased that were lying around their home. He had tried to buy a long rifle at a local store but was turned away because he would not undergo the required 14-day background check.
He would shoot himself in the head as emergency services arrived, ending one of dozens of school shootings in the US in recent decades. JD Vance recently called it a “fact.”
This characterization is lost on people like Wasilnak and Holden, who both said it would be in honor of their murdered first-grade classmates that they cast their votes for Harris in November.
“I will vote for the 26 who cannot,” Wasilnak said of the dead.
Since Sandy Hook, states have passed more than 620 gun safety laws.
School shootings continue to occur. Earlier this month, two students and two teachers were killed at Apalachee High School in Georgia by a 14-year-old boy carrying an AR-style rifle.