“February 14, 2018 began like any other school day, getting two teenagers out the door so they wouldn’t be late.

It was a typical day until close to the end, then gunshots. Kids were frantic. My son, running from the school, yelling: “I can’t find Jaime!” She had been shot trying to flee. We desperately called friends to see if they had seen her, raced to the hospital trauma center. We didn’t learn of her fate for many hours. We didn’t know where she was shot, if she suffered.

Now she exists only in the past tense. My daughter WAS fourteen. Why? Because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time...and that “wrong” place was school.

It’s been 21 months since Jaime was killed. We watch friends having sweet sixteens, getting driver’s licenses, their first car. Soon they will apply to college. They’ll move out and embark on their journey of independence, working in different careers, maybe get married to the loves of their lives, have babies who become beloved grandchildren. Jaime will never do these things. She was robbed of her life and her future. We were robbed of our life with our precious daughter.

Nobody should know what it feels like to live with a memory of your child running down the hallway with an AR-15 aimed  at her back, forever deemed one of “the unlucky.” When it is YOUR family member who is the unlucky one, this reality is sadly, easy to understand. It is imperative that, EVERYONE understand the casualties of gun violence.

For those of us who do understand---far too many in this room right now----we will fight for change. We will keep on working to pass comprehensive legislation to include background checks on weapons and ammunition, safe storage, assault weapons ban, and other measures guaranteed to stop the carnage that is gun violence. To do this, to even attempt any of this, the most important thing we can do, every single one of us, is VOTE! 

My family is one of the unlucky ones; but with your vote, we can ensure there are far fewer families like mine, and like many of yours, that understand all too well how a typical day forever alters your future with heartbreak. I will miss my daughter forever, and will forever work hard every day, so that perhaps another family doesn’t end up an unlucky one.”

-Fred Guttenberg, Florida