International News

LOS ANGELES, Oct 8, 2017 (APP/AFP) -:Dylan Hockley was all of six years old when Adam Lanza burst into his elementary school in Connecticut nearly five
years ago and shot him dead, along with 19 other young children and six adults.
Since then, Dylan’s mother, Nicole, has waged a determined and tireless
fight against gun violence.
She co-founded the group Sandy Hook Promise, named for the school where the
killings, which stunned Americans, took place on December 14, 2012. Knowing the
huge political obstacles to serious gun control in the US, the organization
works on prevention, and particularly on mental health issues and spotting
warning signs that can presage violence.
When she awoke on a recent morning to learn of the horrific mass shooting
in Las Vegas — the worst in modern US history — she said, “I got incredibly
angry and grieving for what was going on. I began crying — and then I got to
work.”
The news sparked an “emotional roller-coaster” in Hockley, taking her back
to the day of her young son’s death, just as news of every shooting does.
But it also provoked a sense of “frustration that although we are… slowly
making progress, things are moving very slow and every day people die in
preventable acts,” she told AFP in a phone interview.
There is on average one mass shooting in the United States every day, and
33,000 people are killed by firearms each year, 22,000 in suicides.