The president yesterday gave up his weekly address to a civilian for the first time.
Francine Wheeler, the mother of Ben Wheeler, 6, one of the 26 students and adults killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December, made an impassioned plea to lawmakers for stricter gun-control laws. An excerpt:
Hi. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not the president. I’m just a citizen.
And as a citizen, I’m here at the White House today because I want to make a difference and I hope you will join me. My name is Francine Wheeler. My husband, David, is with me. We live in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. David and I have two sons.
Our older son, Nate, soon to be 10 years old, is a fourth-grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our younger son, Ben, age 6, was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly four months ago this weekend.
David and I lost our beloved son, but Nate lost his best friend. On what turned out to be the last morning of his life, Ben told me, quite out of the blue, “I still want to be an architect, Mama, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”
Irrepressibly bright and spirited, Ben experienced life at full tilt.
Until that morning. Twenty of our children, and six of our educators — gone. Out of the blue.
I’ve heard people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded. But not for us. To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday.
Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.
Sometimes, I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse for the boy who would never come home — the same firehouse that was home to Ben’s Tiger Scout Den 6. But other times, I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do.
We have to convince the Senate to come together and pass common-sense gun-responsibility reforms that will make our communities safer and prevent more tragedies like the one we never thought would happen to us.
When I packed for Washington on Monday, it looked like the Senate might not act at all. Then, after the president spoke in Hartford, and a dozen of us met with senators to share our stories, more than two-thirds of the Senate voted to move forward.
Now is the time to act. Please join us. You can talk to your senator, too. Or visit WhiteHouse.gov to find out how you can join the president and get involved. Help this be the moment when real change begins.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.