The recent suicides in Parkland are putting a spotlight on the trauma of gun violence. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the school shooting, talks to Brut about survivor's guilt and his fight for gun safety.
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00:00As he's on the phone with me telling me he's hearing bullets and there's a shooter, my daughter was getting shot.
00:10I apologize.
00:13So for us, that is a moment that I will never, ever, ever be able to clear from my head.
00:31I sent two children to school. One of my children came home and one of them I buried three days later.
00:40What keeps me going forward through grief is fighting to reduce the gun violence death rate in this country.
00:46My mission is to destroy the gun lobby that prevented progress, and we're succeeding at that.
01:03Since my daughter's death, legislation is passing in this country, across states, across cities, and even now in the House of Representatives.
01:16You could get your gun illegally, you could steal your gun, but you could walk into any store and buy the ammunition.
01:26Jamie's law will extend the requirement for background checks to ammunition.
01:30Survivors' guilt is a very real thing, and my son has it. My son is so angry that he couldn't do something to save his sister.
01:56It's a real thing, and it's something that I make sure we're talking about, that we don't ignore.
02:03And I think with these most recent suicides, it got people to finally maybe pause and look a little inward and focus on their own mental health.
02:13We need to make sure we are aggressively providing services for people so that they have an easy, accessible place to go to get help if they feel they need it.
02:25Orange was always her favorite color, and the night that she was killed, all of her dance sisters, that's what I call them, but the kids she danced with, got together at the dance studio and started making orange ribbons.
02:48To honor my daughter, I decided I needed to start a movement called Orange Ribbons for Jamie that would honor things that matter to Jamie in life, such as dance, such as anti-bullying programs.
03:03They're losing the political battle. They're losing the message battle. All they have left is lawsuits, and they are filing lawsuits all over the country right now.
03:18My message to every governor and every mayor listening, pass gun safety legislation and get the NRA to sue you because they can't afford all the lawsuits. It will bankrupt them.
03:33It will bankrupt them.