I wrote a story for Hearst about one of many prayer vigils held around the country to commemorate the people lost to gun violence. Here is an excerpt:
Each pair represented the absence of people killed by guns.
Dale Ferguson's father was one of those people.
Edward Ferguson was a school custodian shot dead outside of the Elizabeth S. Shelton elementary school in Shelton in August 1988. Ferguson was 8 years old.
His daughter, now grown, said that new tragedies of gun violence bring back a "flash-flood of memories."
"I could see the place where the bullet went above his right eye," Ferguson said. "I can see it so clearly after 25 years."
Ferguson, of Stratford, spoke at an interfaith vigil held Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford as part of the national "Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath" weekend.
Ferguson said she didn't just lose her father. People don't realize, she said in an interview after speaking at the vigil, that the cost of murders by guns is not just losing the person killed. It's also the ripple effect of that death.
She also lost touch with her father's family, and her mother was never quite the same after losing her best friend and love of her life, Ferguson says.
"We could never 100 percent prevent ... events from happening, but we can do our part to make sure we did everything we could for it not to happen again," Ferguson said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said constituents have asked him since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, " `Hasn't America moved on? Hasn't America forgotten about this issue?' "
But he says that is not so. Other issues are higher priority than gun control for many voters, but he thinks that a majority still want reform.
Nearly a year ago a gun-control bill drawn up after the Sandy Hook mass shooting was defeated in the Senate.
There was a majority in support of the legislation, but not enough senators to stop a filibuster, Blumenthal said.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
