Dear John,

One year ago today, an eighteen-year-old walked into Robb Elementary School with an AR-15 rifle, slaughtering 19 children and two teachers. Seventeen others were injured in the carnage.

I was shaken to my core upon hearing the news. My mind went straight to the families of the victims. They have faced an incomprehensible amount of pain and grief in the past year since the shooting. My heart is with them today and every day.

Who could possibly accept a society where this violence can occur? Where someone who just became a legal adult can walk into a store and purchase a high-powered assault rifle?

Sadly, a year after Uvalde, America is on pace for a record number of mass shootings in 2024. It is a massive failure by our nation to take sufficient action.

Yes, we have won some victories in the fight against gun violence. We introduced and passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first significant gun reform legislation in decades. But it’s not enough.

When my son Jordan was shot and killed in 2012, I prayed to God that no more mothers would have to go through the pain that I felt. We can’t bring back the innocent lives that were lost in Uvalde, but by enacting comprehensive gun control, we can prevent future tragedies like this one.

The NRA and the Republican politicians they back must come to terms with the consequences of their actions. The consequences of blocking our attempts to make guns less accessible to those who should not have them. People are dying and they won’t let us enact common-sense legislation to help stop the carnage.

John, thoughts and prayers are meaningless without action.

The families of the Uvalde victims deserve better, gun violence survivors deserve better, and I’ll do everything in my power to keep families safe against this heartbreaking epidemic of unnecessary gun violence.

Thanks for reading,

Lucy McBath