Survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting are preparing to vote in their first presidential election in November, a report has revealed.
Grace Fischer, Emma Ehrens, Lilly Wasilnak and Matt Holden are all 18 years old and were in first grade when the shooting occurred.
Almost 12 years later, each spoke with NBC News on their plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris as president.
The interviews come months after the graduating class visited Harris at the White House in June, a week before she declared her candidacy.
When asked about their decision, the four who previously attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut cited the candidate’s stance on gun laws as the main reason.
Pictured here, 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 have told NBC News they plan to vote for Harris in November now that they are 18.
“For me it’s a no-brainer,” said survivor Wasilnak, 18, after meeting 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 six years old when 20-year-old Adam Lanza ruthlessly gunned down 20 of his classmates and six teachers on Dec. 14, 2012.
She told the station how coming of age at such a monumental time has given her and others hope that they can push for change, after spending most of her childhood watching.
She, like others, survived Lanza’s attack by standing silently in a classroom as the 20-year-old unloaded a series of guns legally purchased by his mother.
At the time, activists hoped the event would prompt legislative changes around gun laws, which have since been upheld in every state.
Meanwhile, Friday marked 20 years since the federal ban on assault weapons expired, and Harris, like other Democrats, is campaigning on renewed guidance nationwide.
“The country was forced to look at this issue in a visceral and terrible way,” gun safety activist Emma Brown said of the seeds planted by the school shooting, which remains the second-deadliest in history behind the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech.
“The loss of all those children in their classrooms was so unconscionable and so horrific that even politicians and people who had been trying to act like this wasn’t a growing problem in this country couldn’t deny it,” he continued.
“It’s a huge turning point in our lives,” said Fischer, who was just six years old when 20-year-old Adam Lanza ruthlessly gunned down 20 of his classmates and six teachers in 2012.
Meanwhile, Friday marked 20 years since the federal ban on assault weapons expired, and Harris, like other Democrats, is campaigning on renewed guidance nationwide.
Her efforts to impose a more sweeping ban have failed, a failure survivors hope Harris will fix if she wins the Oval Office.
Brown is the executive director of Giffords, a gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who is also a shooting survivor.
Her efforts to impose a more sweeping ban have failed, a failure survivors hope Harris will fix if she wins the Oval Office.
Ehrens, who was standing next to Lanza when he shot his classmates, told the station she is disillusioned by the lack of change since the shooting, made worse by the seemingly endless stream of similar incidents since then.
“We were told this would be the game changer,” he said.
“It really breaks your heart a little bit more each time.”
The group had already met Harris when she was vice president just before their graduation, and shared their individual stories from that day.
Harris, in turn, told them: “None of you should have had the experience you’ve had.”
The candidate has since said keeping students safe in schools is a top priority and has championed bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as universal background checks.
Pieces of shattered tempered glass litter chairs and seats at Sandy Hook Elementary School after the December 2012 shooting
The motive for the gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, massacring 20 first-graders and six educators has never been determined.
“I vote for the 26 who can’t do it,” one survivor said of those killed. Meanwhile, school shootings continue, with two students and two teachers killed at Georgia’s Apalachee High School earlier this month.
Since announcing her campaign in July, Harris has also said she supports laws that would allow a family member or law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily confiscate guns if they believe the owner could cause harm.
Speculation about such laws was renewed in the wake of Lanza’s killing spree, due to the multiple semi-automatic weapons used and the fact that Lanza was old enough to be carrying a rifle at the time of the shooting in the eyes of the state.
However, Lanza ended up using guns purchased by his mother and kept at home, after attempting to purchase a “long gun” rifle at a local store before being turned away for not wanting to undergo the required 14-day background check.
He shot himself in the head as emergency services arrived, ending one of dozens of school shootings in the US over the past few decades, something JD Vance recently said was a “fact of life”.
This characterization is not understood by people like Wasilnak and Holden, who said they would vote for Harris in November in honor of their slain first-graders.
“I vote for the 26 who can’t do it,” Wasilnak said of those who died.
Since Sandy Hook, states have passed more than 620 gun safety laws.
However, school shootings continue: Two students and two teachers were killed at Apalachee High School in Georgia earlier this month by a 14-year-old boy carrying an AR-style rifle.
