'Inspiring and Heartbreaking': The Rise of Support Groups for Shooting Survivors

“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the N.R.A., telling us nothing could ever be done to prevent this: we call B.S.,” she told the crowd of hundreds. “They say that tougher gun laws do not prevent gun violence: we call B.S. “They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun: we call B.S. They say guns are just tools, like knives, and are as dangerous as cars: we call B.S. They say that no laws would have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that occur: we call B.S. “That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call B.S.”

Less than a week since the shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas students have already organized a march on Washington to demand lawmakers do something to address gun violence in the US: The March For Our Lives will take place March 24. Another student survivor, Sara Giovanello, told Broadly: "Hearing [the shooter] fire so quickly and hearing distant screams from the building over from me was surreal," the 17-year-old junior said. "We need to make America safe again. That’s it. Semi-automatic weapons should not be attainable to an ordinary citizen, and the fact that I even need to say that is haunting."

In the hours and days after a 19-year-old stormed his former high school—after legally purchasing a military-style AR-15 rifle—and killed 17 people, these students unwittingly joined a community of survivors calling for lawmakers to address gun violence. One woman who lost her son in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting in 2012 called the community “the unfortunate family of gun-violence survivors.”

In order to process the devastating impact associated with shootings and gun-related deaths, a number of support groups and networks have popped up in recent years. Some are small, such as Shooting Survivors, a Facebook group launched in January by a survivor aiming to provide online resources for people with similar tragic experiences. Others were spurred by shootings that made national headlines. The Rebels Project, for example, was formed by survivors of the Columbine High School shooting after the Aurora theater massacre. Survivors Empowered grew out of Jessi’s Message, a nonprofit launched by the parents of Jessica Redfield Ghawi, who was killed in Aurora. (When they can, the group deploys a “rapid response team” to communities that have been impacted by gun violence—once they get there, they offer support to survivors and their families.)

Another survivor community, the Everytown Survivor Network—an initiative from the gun violence prevention advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety—began to take shape after the attempted assassination of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Formally launched in 2015, the network now has more than 1,500 members who have either survived a shooting, witnessed an incident of gun violence, or lost a loved one in a gun-related incident.

Ashley Cech, whose mother survived the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School in 2012, is a member of the team that runs the Survivor Network. She tells Broadly that having a sense of community was crucial in helping her and her family deal with their experience. “The impact of gun violence is profound and it’s life-changing,” she says. “You can’t really be able to understand the perspective of what somebody goes through unless you’ve been through that yourself. That ability and that experience of connecting with somebody else who has a glimpse into what that is like is really life-changing and is an incredible source for a lot of survivors.”

“It helps to remind people they’re not alone,” she adds.

Cech says it’s both “incredibly inspiring and heartbreaking” that the number of support groups for gun violence survivors is rising. “You don’t want to see them growing,” she says, “but it’s the reality that we’re living in right now. And knowing that and being able to use that community for healing and good is something we’re always striving to do.”

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 315 Americans are shot every day; today, and every day, 93 people will die from being shot. And while the issue has become highly politicized, thanks in part to Republicans taking campaign dollars from the National Rifle Association, Cech says this is a “gun violence prevention” issue, not a “gun control” issue—a phrase that some people feel clashes with the Constitution and the right to bear arms. “Gun control is an outdated term that we don’t use anymore,” she says, “because it’s not an accurate descriptor of what it is we’re trying to accomplish."

In fact, the students behind the March For Our Lives protest say their efforts aren’t about politics at all. "This isn't about the GOP," Cameron Kasky, an 11th-grader at Douglas, told ABC News. "This isn't about the Democrats. This is about the adults. We feel neglected and at this point, you're either with us or against us."

“We’re in a time in our country where Americans are fed up with what they’re seeing happening in the country,” Cech says. “More and more people who have been personally impacted by gun violence are speaking out about what happened to them in ways that really move hearts and change minds.”

Their perspective is imperative in the work to reduce gun violence, she continues. “We know that when survivors speak out, people listen.”

Cech also says the burden of advocating for better gun safety measures doesn’t and shouldn’t fall on survivors. “I think the work falls on our legislators, and ultimately our legislators are the ones who are going to need to take action on this issue,” she says. “You’re not going to see a survivor sitting idly by while this issue is waiting to be addressed. Survivors will always be vocal because they know the cost, and they know the pain of being impacted by gun violence in that way. But ultimately it falls to our elected officials, and it falls to every American who is fed up with this issue to make their voices heard.”