Newtown families on gun control, part two (link to video)
60 Minutes, Scott Pelley -- April 7, 2013
Here are some of those anguished human voices that reached out and spoke to me.
[Page 5]
Scott Pelley: But gun rights advocates make the argument, "This wouldn't have helped at Sandy Hook."
David Wheeler: I mean of course, on the federal level, not every law passed is gonna have -- make a difference in what happened to us. Generally speaking, it is important for us to try and control the illegal flow of weapons. I don't think anyone is against that. I don't think anyone is against -- you know, I mean, if you look at the subject of universal background checks, and you look at the study that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine in mid-January, the majority of Americans asked support that. You hear all the time that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Well, then let's start some background checks for people.
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Page 6]
Scott Pelley: Do any of you fear that after only four months the impact of this on the Congress is beginning to fade, and the memory of how we felt on that day is beginning to fade?
Francine Wheeler: Well, people do change because the country goes in different places. But we're gonna bring it right back, so that America can see. Four months, to them, it feels like it just happened a moment ago. And yet--
Scott Pelley: To you.
Francine Wheeler: And yet it's been years since I've seen my son. OK? So we're just-- we're not going anywhere. We're here. And we're going to be here.
Jimmy Greene: We don't get to move on. We don't have the benefit of turning the page to another piece of legislation and having another debate and playing politics the same we we've been doing. We don't have that benefit. We're gonna live with this for the rest of our lives. So our legislators need to hear us.
Nicole Hockley: For many of us, coming up to the four-month anniversary, we're only just starting to find our voices and to be able to come out of that initial state of shock, to be able to do something actively ourselves. So we-- we are not going anywhere. We are gaining momentum now to prepare for this marathon.
Scott Pelley: This is a lifelong pursuit for all of you?
Group: Yes. Yeah.
Newtown families on gun control, part one (link to video)
60 Minutes, Scott Pelley -- April 7, 2013
Here are a few more "choice insights" from the survivors of gun violence, who are just now re-finding their citizen voice.
[Page 3]
Scott Pelley: What about the mental health care piece of all of this? What ideas, what thoughts do you have on that?
Mark Barden: I think mental health, brain health is paramount. It's just as important as everything else. It's just that, at this particular time, the focus on legislation is about the gun part of the issues.
Nelba Marquez-Greene: I'm not an expert on guns. But I am an expert in mental health. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. We need to put a lot more dollars behind our mental health system in America. I've had the benefit of practicing in another country for quite a while. And I can tell you that we're behind the curve on how we deal with mental health issues and family issues in this country.
Scott Pelley: Based on your expertise, what do we do wrong? Why do these people seem to fall through the cracks and not get caught by the system?
Nelba Marquez-Greene: I think one of the barriers or one of the challenges is that there's a whole lotta stigma attached to getting help. The fact that you have to go to a therapist or a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and then get a diagnosis for your child, that can be very humbling and scary for parents. I can't speak specifically for what happened with Adam Lanza and his family. As a mother, my heart breaks for Adam Lanza's mother.
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Page 4]
Jimmy Greene: As a parent, it's my job to love my children. And by loving them, doesn't mean to give them whatever they want, or to feed whatever-- they're passionate about if it's potentially harmful to themselves or to someone else. So I feel like there is a huge, huge gaping hole in the way that that child was parented.
David Wheeler: It's more than a parenting vacuum as well. There's a community vacuum here. I mean, this didn't happen by itself. This didn't happen in a bubble, you know? She had a life. She had friends. People knew. They had to know.
Bill Sherlach: We have this sense of complacency where it should be someone else's job to take care of this. "I shouldn't have to worry about this." Well, you know what? You do have to worry about it. You have to worry about your family; you have to worry about your community. You have to be involved. You just can't sit off and say, "Well, you know what? I have mine, so I don't have to worry about that 'cause it's not gonna affect me." Well, you had 26 families that became directly affected by this sense of complacency that seems to be overwhelming our country at this point in time.
David Wheeler: I would like every parent in this country -- that's 150 million people. I would like them to look in the mirror. And that's not a figure of speech, Scott. I mean, literally find a mirror in your house and look in it and look in your eyes and say, "This will never happen to me. This will never happen in my school. This will never happen in my community." And see if you actually believe that. And if there is a shadow, the slightest shadow of doubt about what you've said, think about what you can do to change that in your house, in your community, in your school, in your country, because we have an obligation to our children to do this for them. It's gonna happen again. It is going to happen again. And every time, you know, it's somebody else's school, it's somebody else's town. It's somebody else's community until one day you wake up and it's not.
Congress must hear these citizen voices;
and yes, Sooner would be better.
Yes it matters. It is up to us to create the kind of society we'd hope to one day see. Otherwise we will wake up one day, and wished we had ... tried harder.