Press Releases

Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) issued the following statement ten years after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut:

“Ten years ago today we lost 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I’ll never forget how awful and shocking that day felt and still feels a decade later.

“The unthinkable horror of that mass shooting changed minds and caused people to say ‘enough.’ In the years that followed, a new political movement to prevent gun violence took hold, which today commands more popular support and influence than the gun lobby. That helped accomplish passage of the most important gun safety reforms enacted in nearly thirty years – including legislative provisions designed to prevent school shootings like the one in Newtown.

“But the things we have not been able to do are still deeply frustrating. We are still bitterly divided on the question of the place guns occupy in our society. We haven’t been able to pass background checks and the assault weapons ban in the Senate. And we cannot restore the futures taken from 20 students and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, or assuage the pain of their families and the families of the hundreds of thousands of Americans lost to gun violence in the ten years since our country got such a brutal wakeup call.

“My heart goes out to Newtown today, and especially to the families of those we lost on December 14, 2012.”