Vigil honors CT gun violence victims
A Monday morning vigil to honor Connecticut gun violence victims on the eighth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was not just about remembrance — it was a call to action.
Since the 2012 shooting of 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook, about 300,000 people in the United States have been killed by guns, said Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, which hosted the Facebook Live vigil.
“Vigils are not enough,” Stein said. “We must commit to action.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, one of several speakers during the vigil, said although eight years have gone by since that tragic day in Newtown, “the pain feels so unbelievably fresh.”
“It is unthinkable that it’s been eight years. Those little boys and girls would be starting high school this year … and those educators would have had eight fantastic years of personal growth,” he said. “The loss is no less, of course, for those who lost their children, their brothers, their sisters, their parents that day.”
Murphy said it’s important to not only “send out prayers and thoughts” to families struggling to cope with the loss of their loved ones, but to remember the victims.
“It’s important to remember these lives and how precious they were, and how their greatness was stolen from us,” he said.
More than 180 people died by gun violence in Connecticut this past year, according to CT Against Gun Violence, and the names of those victims were read during Monday’s vigil.
Among those named were 10 individuals who died in the greater Danbury area — including 39-year-old Bethel resident Edward Simon III, 64-yearold Redding resident Nancy Commaille and Ray Simmons, a 39-year-old Waterbury man shot to death in Danbury this summer.
Murphy said gun violence “is not inevitable.”
“There are laws on the books in the United States today that make that kind of gore and carnage much more likely than if we were able to pass a set of different laws that made it harder for anyone to be able to get their hands on a weapon of that power,” he said.
It was noted that most shooting deaths don’t receive national attention, including that of 20-yearold Shane Oliver, who was fatally shot in 55 days before the massacre at Sandy Hook.
“The 20 little precious souls (at Sandy Hook) were not lost — they were prematurely snatched away from their families, just as my Shane was snatched away from me,” Oliver’s mother, Janet Rice, said during Monday’s vigil.
Rice’s son died Oct. 20, 2012 in Hartford, after a verbal altercation turned physical, then fatal.
“He and his girlfriend were going to go to a vigil for his friend … (but) they never got a chance to make it to the vigil,” Rice said. “Shane got into an argument with Luis Rodriguez (and) was shot in his back. He died fighting for his life in surgery at Hartford Hospital.”
Rice said when she heard what happened at Sandy Hook, she was “mortified.”
“I felt the pain of those parents, and I just wanted to run to them and let them know that I, too, am going through the same thing that they’re going through — and whatever it is that I can do to help them, I’m here. I want to do whatever I can,” she said.
Rice said she met many of the parents who lost their children and loved ones at Sandy Hook and can’t believe she and they are “still going through the same thing” they were eight years ago.
“This is ridiculous, and we need to do something about it,” she said. “We need to do everything we can to stop, reduce and end gun violence in the state of Connecticut — and it can be done if we all come together. We can do this.”
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said over the past 10 years, the lives of 2,056 people in Connecticut have been lost to gun violence — and despite the progress that has been made, Connecticut’s gun laws are not enough to turn the tide.
“We can pass the most progressive laws in our country — make no mistakes we have done that — but we need Congress to do the same,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal echoed that sentiment, saying that Connecticut is no safer than states with weaker gun laws “because guns cross state boundaries and guns have no respect for state lines.”
“We are all in this epidemic of gun violence together as a nation, and my hope is that the nation as a whole will take this occasion — the eighth anniversary of that tragedy at Sandy Hook — to strengthen its determination to combat gun violence,” Blumenthal said.