Q&A: Following Minnesota school shooting, Sandy Hook survivor advocates for better gun storage education

On Dec. 14, 2012, Abbey Clements was teaching in a classroom filled with second graders at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary.

Suddenly, she heard a large crash that sounded like metal folding chairs falling.

Clements soon realized they were gunshots — 154 in total.

She hid with her students, doing what little she could do to shield them from the violence and terror happening within their school walls.

“I carry that horrific day with me,” said Clements at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “Twenty beautiful first-grade children and six of my beautiful colleagues were killed.

“They should still be here.”

More than a decade has passed since the Sandy Hook mass shooting. But for Clements, the pain of that December morning remains — and then is experienced anew with each new school shooting, such as Wednesday’s in Minneapolis.

Clements is now a full-time gun violence prevention activist and co-founder of Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence — an educator-led initiative demanding community safety from gun violence.

Clements spoke with the Deseret News two days after two children were killed and more than a dozen others injured in the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church, which includes a school.

She again called for schools to take primary roles in gun violence prevention — while emphasizing the vitalness of gun owners safely securing firearms in their homes.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Deseret News: Do you relive your Sandy Hook experience every time your phone receives a notification of a school shooting, including the recent one in Minnesota?

Abbey Clements: I have carried this with me. You’re changed after going through something like this. It’s such a trauma. I’m like a new person. Oftentimes, people who have been through trauma feel like there’s a “before you” and then there’s an “after you.”

When I see any kind of shooting — especially of young people around a school — it’s just visceral for me.

I have to take a step back for a second and prepare myself because I know that for the victims’ loved ones, and for their teachers and for the whole community, their lives will never be the same.

DN: How did you make the decision to move from the elementary school classroom to full-time national advocacy?

AC: I was a teacher for 32 years. I love teaching. It’s just what I’ve always done.

Often teachers are at a crossroads when something like this happens, and they have big decisions to make. We were told, “Well, if you don’t like it, just do something else.”

But for teachers, this is just what we do. Some people feel like they were born to do it. I just know that I loved it, and I loved working with kids.

After the tragedy, I started learning about this issue. I became a gun violence prevention activist. I became an organizer in the state of Connecticut. And I also met survivors from other school shootings and other events. It was important to me to help propel the voices of the survivors and remember the stories.

Simply knowing the statistics doesn’t seem to make the changes that need to happen. So I kept doing both things (teaching and advocating) for a long time.

But after we started Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence almost four years ago, it became more difficult to do both.

Trying to organize educators who haven’t been intentionally brought into the movement became my passion, and so I had to make a difficult decision and step away from teaching.

DN: When school shootings such as the recent one in Minnesota occur, people are left cold because they don’t have an answer to a devastating problem.

What’s your response when asked for solutions to preventing gun violence in school?

AC: Every single day, 120 people are killed by a gun in the United States — and twice as many injured by guns, and then there are hundreds of witnesses.

This is a public health crisis, and we’ve allowed this issue to become a political one.

Therefore, we’re left with this perpetual problem that seems endless.

But I do have hope that we can make change.

Obviously, it’s not going to be one thing. There isn’t one answer. But I do believe that if every sector of our society commits to doing something, commits to an authentic campaign or initiative to address this crisis, we can make changes.

Schools and the education space have been a little bit slow on this issue because of the ramifications of speaking out about this. It devolves into a political fight.

But schools have a respected voice … and I think one thing that the school community can do in a very powerful way is to disseminate information on how to securely store firearms.

DN: Why is secure firearm storage such an essential priority?

AC: Two-thirds of school shooters get their gun from home or from a friend or relatives — so this is preventable.

If we start normalizing this education from schools, it will slowly become part of what is expected. This is preventable with more education.

I think we’re afraid to talk about this. We need district leaders to step up. Teachers can’t do this alone. They need the support of their leaders to say, “We got this — we’re going to send out this fact: Storing a firearm securely can save lives.”

DN: What are the basics of securing firearms at home?

AC: It starts with locking up firearms and storing them in a safe. They say that the safest way is to separate the ammunition from the firearm. Lock them up separately.

Then spread that information around your community … and when you send your child to a friend’s house, ask if they have firearms and if they are securely stored.

I know that’s a hard question to ask, but we ask about allergies because maybe your child can’t eat peanut butter.

So we can normalize this. If you do it by text, it might be a little bit easier. We can normalize questions among gun owners like, “What safe is best for you?” or “Where did you get your safe?”

That spreads the idea that if you’re going to own a lethal weapon, it must be secured.

DN: What can schools, districts and lawmakers do to better support gun safety education?

AC: It’s education. It’s normalizing the expectation of securely storing lethal weapons in the home.

And then if people continue hearing that from their school board, from their superintendent, from the principal or from their pediatrician, it becomes normalized.

I think there is tremendous potential to make a change.

DN: So changing the “secure all firearms” culture can start, or at least be supported, in the classroom?

AC: I think so. The data supports this.

Look at the number of stolen weapons that were left in cars that are unsecured. How many unintentional shootings are there with young people getting ahold of a gun? It’s so traumatic. In a second, your life can change.

I was just talking to a Utah teacher who had me on his podcast.

He told me a story about how he grew up with guns. He came from a military family. When he was a little kid, he was told not to go into his dad’s office and touch the guns.

But one day he was playing with a gun in the office that he thought was unloaded. He was playing with his sister and he shot toward her and a bullet was released. It didn’t hit her, thank God. But in that moment, it could have gone a very different way. Lives could have been changed forever.

So there’s tremendous potential for education, and I think that has to come from schools.

DN: Discussions about guns often digress into political arguments. Can such essential discussions ever become apolitical?

AC: We have to get to a point where they are.

I once sat on a plane with a military guy. We had very different views. But by the end of the plane ride, we were really on the same page. He wants to keep his kids safe.

He has firearms. And I come from a different place … but in the end, we were hugging and exchanging numbers.

I think that we are far more aligned than what the megaphones and the voices are telling us. But we need that human interaction that I think we’ve gotten away from.

We’re so polarized. But really, we all just want to keep our kids safe. I don’t think there’s anybody who wouldn’t agree to that.

A lot of times people talk about being a “responsible gun owner.” Well, that’s great. That’s what we want. We know there are more guns than people in this country. It’s all about how we’re going to live alongside them — and not have guns be the leading cause of death for kids in America.

Culture change is possible. We’ve seen it with car seats, with smoking and with drunk driving. Things can be better for the next generation.