Grace Fisher survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School because she huddled quietly while her first-grade teacher calmly read “The Nutcracker.”
She then spent the rest of her childhood watching dozens of similar shootings unfold and devastate other schools across the country.
Now 18, Fisher will be voting for the first time in November’s presidential election — a monumental moment that gives her and others hope that they can make a difference, nearly 12 years after living through one of the worst school shootings in American history.
“This is a major turning point in our lives,” said Fisher, who was 6 years old on Dec. 14, 2012, when a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, a gun safety organization founded by shooting survivor and former Rep. Gabby Giffords, said activists at the time hoped the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, would be a turning point and spark significant legislative action.
“The country was forced to take a visceral, horrifying look at this issue,” Brown said. “The deaths of so many children in classrooms was so unimaginably horrifying that, for the first time, even politicians and people who were trying to act as if this wasn’t a growing problem in this country couldn’t deny it.”
Since then, states have passed hundreds of gun safety laws, but major proposed federal bills, including bans on semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, have been defeated.
After the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, the Trump administration imposed a federal ban on bump stocks, gun accessories used to increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles, but the Supreme Court overturned the ban this year.
Friday marked 20 years since the 1994 federal assault weapons ban expired. Meanwhile, mass shootings have become more frequent.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Emma Brown, Executive Director of Giffords
Since 2013, NBC News has tracked 64 staged school shootings, leaving at least 122 people dead. Most recently, on September 4, two students and two teachers were killed at Apalachee High School in Georgia by a 14-year-old suspect armed with an AR-style rifle, authorities said.
Guns are the No. 1 cause of death among children and teens, surpassing car crashes and cancer as the leading cause of death among U.S. youth ages 1 to 17 for the third year in a row, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Solutions to Gun Violence said Thursday.
“They said this was going to be the catalyst that changed everything,” said Emma Ehrens, 18, who was next to the Sandy Hook shooter when he shot her classmate. “It really does hurt my heart a little bit every time.”
Speaking to NBC News, Ehrens, Fischer and two other first-grade survivors of Sandy Hook Elementary School said they hope to turn the tide by electing Vice President Kamala Harris as president.
“It’s a no-brainer for me,” said survivor Lilly Wasilnak, 18.
The teens first met Harris at the White House on National Gun Violence Awareness Day, June 6, just before their high school graduation. They each shared their own experiences with the shooting, and Harris thanked them for their bravery.
“None of you should have had to go through what you’ve had to go through,” Harris said, according to a video released by the White House. “Please know that you are making a difference.”
Harris has said her top priority is protecting students from gun violence in schools, and her plan, supported by victims, includes banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and requiring universal background checks.
Harris also supports so-called red flag laws, which would allow family members or police to apply for a court order to temporarily confiscate a gun if they believe the owner could pose a threat of harm.
Matt Holden, another survivor who turned 18 last month, said those plans differ from those of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, who came under fire last week for saying school shootings are a “fact of life.”
“I don’t like this. I don’t like to acknowledge this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” the Ohio senator said at a rally in Phoenix. “But if you’re a psychopath and you want to be in the headlines, you’d find that our schools are an easy target.”
“We need to beef up security so that some psychopath can’t walk in through the front door and kill our kids,” Vance added.
At the rally, Vance said strict gun control is not the solution. Similarly, at a National Rifle Association event in May, Trump said he would repeal executive orders by the Biden administration enacted to reduce gun violence.
In response to a request for comment, the Trump campaign cited relatives of shooting victims who support the former president, including J.T. Lewis, whose brother, Jesse, was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
“President Trump created a federal school safety commission and signed the School Violence Prevention Act,” Lewis said. “He supports strengthening our schools and protecting our nation’s children. Kamala Harris wants to take police out of schools and leave our children defenseless. The choice is simple.”
Brown, the Giffords secretary, said gun safety legislation is the way forward to ensure school shootings don’t become a normal occurrence.
“We have candidates in this race who are making the point time and time again that it doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.
As first reported by NBC News, Giffords has spent $15 million supporting Harris’ campaign and other House candidates who support stricter gun control.
Since the Sandy Hook massacre, states have passed more than 620 gun safety laws, Brown said. In 2022, President Joe Biden enacted the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years.
“The momentum is there and the will is there,” Brown said.
Wasilnak and Holden said when the survivors vote for the first time this fall, it will be to honor their first-grade classmates who will never get to experience this milestone, and the educators who gave their lives so they could vote.
“I’m voting for the 26 people who can’t vote,” Wasilnak said.