For Sandy Hook's 10th anniversary, four elementary school shooting survivors told me their stories.

The oldest—52—was shot in 1979. Most people have no idea what happened to him.

The youngest—10—hid under a table in Uvalde, watching his friends die. (1/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/… Cam Miller was 10 when a teenage girl opened fire outside his school 43 years ago. One bullet went straight through him, an inch from his heart.
"I would wake up scared that she would be in my house... I never slept through the night for years." (2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…

It had been a perfect day for Caitlyne Gonzales. The Uvalde survivor saw Beto O'Rourke, one of her gun-safety heroes, speak. She took a selfie with him, got free shirts, ate fried chicken after.

Then, on the way home, police lights flashed behind her family's car.
A thread: Three black SUVs, driven by Texas state troopers, blocked them into a parking lot. Caitlyne, sitting in the back seat between her mom and sister, clenched her teeth and crossed her arms.
“Oh my God,” her sister said.
“Shush,” Caitlyne instructed.
She was terrified. (2/)

After years of writing about school shootings, this summer, in Uvalde, was the most extraordinary experience of my career.
And the most extraordinary day was Sept. 1. It began an hour before one survivor, Caitlyne Gonzales, met her fifth-grade teachers for the first time. (1/) I watched Caitlyne pore through YouTube videos about survivors from other schools.
“He’s now in a wheelchair,” she said about a boy who was shot three times.
“She’s a cheerleader,” she said about a girl who had seen students dying in their own blood. (2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…

I've been writing about school shootings for more than five years. Never have I witnessed a clearer or more unsettling illustration of the permanent damage they cause than I did at Saturday's March for Our Lives rally, after a brief moment of panic in the crowd. (thread/) Four days prior, I'd set out to chronicle the week through the eyes of two survivors. Sam Fuentes, from Parkland, famously vomited on stage during her 2018 speech. She arrived to DC with shrapnel in her leg—and serious doubt that anything would change.(2/)
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/…

Ever wonder why America:
Can't stop school shootings?
Doesn't know more about mass shooters?
Doesn't make safer guns?
Knows so little about an epidemic that kills 40,000+ people a year?

Our government's ignorance is no accident. It's the results of a decades-old plot. (thread) Imagine for a moment if—mid-pandemic—Congress barred the CDC from studying covid because *one lawmaker* rejected the proven research. Hard to believe, right?

That's what happened with gun violence 25+ years ago. It's cost thousands of lives since. Most people have no idea. (2/)

Getting some angry emails about my new book from gun owners who assume that any coverage of gun violence — even when focused on how to spare kids from it — is, intrinsically, an attempt to take their firearms away. It’s a notion pushed by gun lobbyists. It's also a lie. (thread) First, to debunk some myths they keep sending:
"It's the person, not the gun": Nope. Americans aren't uniquely evil. Exorbitantly more people are killed by guns here because we have exorbitantly more guns—as many as 400 million—and laws that are less effective at regulating them.

Four years ago, I met two extraordinary children. Ava was 7, from rural South Carolina. Tyshaun was 8, from Southeast DC. They didn't know each other or have much in common, but gun violence had ruined both of their lives. This is the story of how they became best friends. (1/) One afternoon when Ava was in first grade, she walked outside for recess just as a teenager with a gun pulled up in a truck. He opened fire on the playground. Ava dropped her chocolate cupcake and ran.

The shooter killed the boy Ava loved. His name was Jacob. He was 6. (2/)

On today's front page, the last in our series on what the pandemic has done to children in America. (thread)
wapo.st/coronavirus-re… The first, published just a month into the pandemic, explored the fear and anxiety overwhelming the kids of healthcare workers.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…

I've written almost exclusively about trauma for the past few years, and this story was among the most difficult I've ever reported. I know it's hard to get through, especially now, but I hope you'll try. The Howards are an extraordinary family. (thread)
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/… When the doctor asked Reign, then 9, if she would donate bone marrow to her younger brother, Messiah, she wondered if that meant the doctors would have to take actual bones out of her body. It didn’t matter, Reign decided. She would still do it.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…

As I wrote this story, I heard people claim every day that the virus is a hoax, that’s it’s not as bad as reporters suggest, that it will soon be a memory.

For those people, here is what three children in Michigan have endured since March. (THREAD)
wapo.st/virusorphans The last time Nadeen saw her mother — her best friend — Nada was being lifted into an ambulance. A day later, Nadeen had to call 911 for her dad, too.
“I’ve been to this address before,” the paramedic told her.
“Yeah,” she replied. “You took my mom.”
wapo.st/virusorphans

1/ This year, I partnered w/ @dataeditor to chronicle the many ways school shootings affect children in America. Our project, edited by the magnificent @WPLyndaRobinson, was anchored by a deep look at how the epidemic has changed students who endured them.
wapo.st/2AdJyoM 2/ Our school shootings database, the most exhaustive ever built, charts incidents dating back to '99. We found that 2018 was, by every measure, the worst year in modern U.S. history.
Shootings: 25
People shot: 94
People killed: 33
Students exposed: 25,332
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1/6 — We published six stories this year that explored how children in America contend every day with gun violence. The first featured Tyshaun, a second-grader whose father was shot outside his D.C. school:
wapo.st/2pW37uf The second followed first-graders Ava, Karson, Siena and Collin, who were on a S.C. playground when a teen shot their friend Jacob. Those kids are among more than 135,000 who've experienced a school shooting since Columbine:
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