Sandy Hook Survivors, Now Newtown Freshman Talk Gun Violence

High school freshman Jordan Gomes vividly remembers the silence that enveloped the hallways of Sandy Hook Elementary when the gunfire abruptly ended. Jordan was in fourth-grade on December 14, 2012 at 9:35 AM. This is what she told the NewsTimes:

We didn't know what was happening, but we knew. It was life-changing, in the simplest that I can put it. How do you come back from something like that? Everybody was just like zombies. The younger kids didn't play on the playground anymore. They brought in comfort dogs for us.

After the shootings in Parkland, Florida, Gomes, along with 200 other Newtown youth, hopped aboard buses on March 24 to meet survivors of the Parkland shootings at the March for Our Lives rally in D.C, which attracted 800,000 marchers.

March for Our Lives Rally in NYC - Photo by Ethan

Newtown High students Jordan Gomes and Jenny Wadhwa are a part of an organization named The Junior Newtown Action Alliance, where its members participate in many different activities including a nonpartisan voter registration drive aimed at high school seniors. Wadhwa explained to the NewsTimes:

We want to humanize the impact of gun violence, and show how one gun doesn't just affect the people that it hits with bullets, but affects the community as a whole.

Many Newtown High students who made the trip to Washington D.C to meet with their counterparts in Parkland Florida believe an important bond was formed and has been a turning point on their road to recovery.

Here's a non-partisan question to parents of all school-age kids, God forbid, if your child was in school and a deranged shooter broke in and began firing off rounds, how would that make you feel and what kind of action would you take, if any?

Download the i95 Mobile App to Rock With Everything Live and Local