A book dropping in the library would send kids hiding under the table.
Because it sounded like a gun.
Those are things people don't think about. They think life goes back to normal and it doesn't.
A lot of the families, I think have wanted to not necessarily make a memorial site,
but to have some sort of goodness come out of this.
We have a lot of a lot of charities in Newtown now I think almost every family has started one who's still here.
And I think that's become an important part of the town of something has to happen from this.
Over the last four years we have been gaining political power—
we have been getting stronger as a movement every single day.
There were certainly warning signs that if someone knew how to read them, we could've prevented this.
All these horrific shootings are preventable if we know what to do.
Newtown is an interesting community, it's a self-selecting place.
People move there for a reason and it's still close enough to New York City that you can get back and forth
you know in about an hour but it's far enough away that
you know you sort of feel like you're in a universe of your own.
We moved to Newtown in 2005.
And we purposely selected that town because of the school system
which had a great music program as well as academics and the public library
and just the feel in the town was just one of a peaceful community with people who were friendly
and nice and it was just a pleasant place to live.
We relocated to Newtown in 2007 to raise our family.
It really worked well for us because we were able to be with our kids around the clock and I wouldn't have it any other way.
You know I would be up early with the kids and I just
got to spend a lot of quality time bonding with my three children
which was I just feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity.
For whatever reason, Daniel got up to walk his siblings to the bus with me.
James's bus was at 6:30 and and Daniel was up
and wanted to walk him to the bus and hug him and kiss him and tell him he loved him.
And then he wanted to do the same and walk Natalie to her boss at 7:30.
And which is not unusual for Daniel to want to do that.
It was a beautiful blue sky crisp December day.
And I remember thinking that it was fun because it was Friday
and I remember thinking "oh this is going to be a great day."
And then at 8:30, I walked Daniel to his bus
and I hugged him and kissed him I told him that I loved him
and off the bus went and I went back to the house to to work on a recording project.
And I started getting text messages, e-mails and phone calls about a lockdown in the district.
Typically we would have been walking down the hall at about 9:30
but we were actually in the library by about 20 after 9:00 and already
sitting down getting our lesson started and that's when you know we started to hear some
sounds that we couldn't immediately identify and I remember saying to the class,
"Everybody quiet down. What is it? What is that noise that I hear?"
I started getting more detailed information that there were reports of a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Which was just very foreign and shocking to hear.
We're watching a news clip and a woman was saying standing outside the school and she was saying,
The principal had been shot and I thought, that can't be right.
You know, it was an unbelievable thing.
My first thought was there's no way that that's a real that's a
real threat that that was something that really took place.
And I so I kind of put it out of my mind for a little bit
and I told my professor when we had a kind of break in the class that I just got this news
and I really wanted to just confirm that everything was OK
and so I was trying to reach my reach my mom, reach my brother, reach my dad.
And I flew down to the school and arrived on this scene,
like nothing I'd ever seen before with more emergency vehicles and personnel in one place I've ever seen.
At this little school down our country lane that I had been to dozens of times as all three of my children were in that school
and as a stay at home dad I would be in there a lot.
It was hard to identify because I don't think I've ever heard gunshots before in real life.
It doesn't sound like it does in the movies.
And then there was a report that there were maybe the principal had been shot.
And I started immediately gearing up for how would have this conversation with
this very sweet, caring, sensitive, compassionate little boy
and how to explain to Daniel you know about this horrific tragedy.
I had to get my keys and lock the doors to the library.
And the doors— the locks were on the outside of the doors.
So that meant I had to go into the hallway to lock the doors and pull them closed
and my key didn't work on the last door—
there were two double doors, another door,
And then there was a doorway at the end of the room that my key didn't didn't work.
There's a firehouse just down the road from the school where they were collecting the children from the school
and they were assembling them by grade order—
they were holding up signs: first grade, second grade, and I was milling around waiting for Daniel to show up in the first grade line
and the lines were getting smaller as the kids were being collected and brought home by their families.
So I remember thinking OK, I’ll just barricade as much as I can against the door which is what I did.
No Daniel, where's Daniel's class? I'm asking around, where's Daniels class?
And you know they didn't know maybe not all of the classes had been taken out of the school yet.
And so my neighbor and friend, Melissa had collected her son Kyle who was Daniel's best friend.
And she called her husband to pick Kyle up and she insisted on staying with me until I until I got Daniel.
They had to crawl on the floor quietly and we had to get into the closet.
And one of them said "Why?" And I said, "Because we have to find the best hiding place in the school."
And
Another one said, "Do we get a prize?" And I said, "Yes you do. You get a prize."
And one of them said, "Is it Candy?"
I said, "Yep it's candy. It's all the candy you want, you just have to remember it's a quiet game
and we're going for crawling on the floor and we're going to go into the back closet."
The kids were all absolutely brave and amazing and wonderful.
We were the last class that was evacuated by the SWAT team out of the building
because they couldn't find us.
So when the SWAT team came, we had no idea what was happening on the outside.
It was late in the day— it was like 4 when I found out that Avielle had died.
My dad called and spoke to my mom who was working there at time and said that he had
he had spoken to her Avielle's dad, Jeremy and they were talking about some logistics—
Jeremy needed people to be able to park in her driveway.
My dad said, "Sure, yeah of course, but Avielle's okay, right?"
And Jeremy said, "No, she's gone."
And then they brought everybody who was left into a room with the
governor and the state police where they announced to us that
that 20 first grade children had been shot to death.
Along with 6 teachers.
And that's when I knew that our sweet little Daniel was gone.
And five years later, I can't wrap my head around the fact that my little Daniel is gone.
And that he's gone forever.
I'm just never going to get used to that.
And he's gone because of somebody else's choice.
Which is— which is a hard pill to swallow.
One of the most difficult things is that once this happens, it shakes your whole foundation of safety.
It feels like you can never again say,
"that's okay you'll be safe."
Because you're not.
Avielle I would say was very bright and not just that she was smart although she definitely was very smart,
but she was a sparkly type person.
She was really engaged child.
So she was used to being with grownups and she was used to being with grownups who respected her as a human
and as a member of their family you know they didn't they never talked down to her in any way.
He was such an active participant in everything in our in our home.
And he wanted to be part of getting ready for Thanksgiving and I have this image in my head—
He had a little sweater vest on, he wanted to be dressed up
and he wore his little headdress that he made in school for Thanksgiving.
And he had that on his little vest on and he had the vacuum cleaner which was probably taller than he was.
And he was vacuuming, trying to help out and get ready for his cousins coming over.
That’s just the kind of kid he was.
What I got from being there that day is that pain is indescribable—
even to watch, and it just made me realize that I needed to spend part of my life
in a way that made sure that no parent ever had to go through that moment ever again.
I mean, having just watched parents go through that moment of realization that your child is not coming back
made me commit right there that I was going to make sure that I lived my life in a way that lessen the chances
that something like that would ever happen to any other set of parents ever again.
And it's almost as if people are able to hear about them
and kind of go on with their day and say, "wow that was really terrible but,
you know it's just kind of part of the life in America."
Surviving has taken on every form, including literal.
And it's a it's a very day to day process very minute to minute.
I guess as you could imagine everyone has suffered and dealt with loss.
And any little thing can set you off: a sight, a random memory, a song.
Any number of things.
And it’ll blindside you.
You know, I'll get I'll just experience something that'll take me back
and or remind me of Daniel.
I want to hold on to a sweet memory and enjoy you know, the happy times with Daniel
and for me it quickly just disintegrates into just real sadness— like a real deep, profound sadness
that I that's almost tangible to me, but I can't I can't find an appropriate word to describe it—
It's a deep sense of longing.
Safety was my biggest issue and not necessarily just my own safety,
but the safety of my family, my children, my students, my friends.
That was the work I had to do.
I had to think about things differently.
I couldn't walk into a store anymore and not think about where are the exits,
where would be good places to hide?
I don't randomly choose a seat in a restaurant anymore.
For the first time people were talking about gun violence prevention in a way that they hadn't previously.
It was the next day after the shooting that the organization, 'Moms Demand Action
For Gun Sense in America' was founded.
Many people have gotten involved in trying to learn about the issue of gun violence.
In general, neighbors helping neighbors and people supporting one another.
You know, I think about that all the time.
The guy that shot and killed my little Daniel and all those other people
had been planning that for at least a year from what we know.
I think every gun death is preventable.
Had he not had 30 round magazines, I'm almost certain that more kids would have survived.
We know that 5 or 6 kids ran out while he was fumbling with an exchange.
What if he had to change clips every 10 bullets rather than every 30 bullets?
Something has to happen from this.
And all of those families are striving to have some piece of good— whether it be
better gun legislation, or mental health, or just a nice place for kids to play.
It's not a silver lining because there is no silver lining in this,
It's a nightmare.
The issue of background checks is controversial nowhere else in the country,
but the United States Congress and a handful of state legislatures.
The NRA has created the reputation of controversy around the issue of gun laws.
It's not that controversial.
You know one of the big misconceptions that we get a lot is that
gun violence prevention means banning guns or taking away guns or something like that.
And that's just not true and that's just not the case.
One of the reasons that people go right to the defensive, or right to
to a second amendment perspective when you say the words gun control
is because you're saying the words gun control.
I don't say those words.
Control is a misnomer and it frightens people and it should.
"Gun safety" I think it is more accurate.
It resonates with people who are responsible gun owners.
This is not a strictly a gun issue.
This is not a mental health issue.
They are not mutually exclusive.
This is a public health crisis.
Some more research led us to realize to understand that when somebody takes their life,
they talk about it first.
When somebody hurts somebody before somebody hurt somebody else,
they talk about it first.
7 out of 10 people who complete suicide talk about it to other people first.
8 out of 10 of these horrific mass shooters, talk about it first.
So they are giving off warning signs.
So now imagine if people around them knew what to do with that information.
So that's what we do.
We train students and teachers and parents how to recognize those warning signs
and then how to take the appropriate next step.
to get that person help before it becomes a tragedy.
People are killed by guns day after day after day, by the hundreds.
If this was any other issue— any other issue,
we would be throwing money at it and talking about it in Congress
and we would be trying to find ways to deal with it.
Whenever you hear about the latest shooting, instead of having that be something that discourages you,
use that to motivate you and use that to call your representatives
and call your elected officials and join your local moms demand action chapter
and get motivated and work and be part of the solution to ending gun violence.
There have been state laws that have changed.
There have been referendums that have passed.
There have been anti gun violence champions that have been elected to state legislatures
and to Congress.
There have been organizations started that didn't exist prior to Sandy Hook.
You know I think that the town still sparkles.
It's still a strong
school system and it's still a lovely community.
My family and wonderful network of friends and our community has literally been our lifeline.
So to rely on that is one piece of advice, and then for me personally
involving myself in this in this good work of
helping others and preventing similar tragedies is richly rewarding.
To be able to do that, so that's been my personal journey that I've found to be my own kind of personal therapy.
We're not as strong as the gun lobby is.
It may take another 5 years to get there,
but we're on a journey that started on that tragic day in December of 2012.
Every one person, every one voice, every one conversation makes a difference.
That's how this works.
And that's how you change the culture,
that's how you— that's a social movement there.
They need all of our voices.
They need to hear from everyone no matter what it is that you can do, do something.