years since the families of the victims have been left to grieve, cope and to work to moving forward while honoring the lives of their children and family members. joining us now, democratic senator chris murphy of connecticut, and senator, so much has not changed in some ways since sandy hook, which is difficult. there s been some movement on gun reform, but certainly not enough. yeah. listen, this whole world, this country, has changed, since my eighth grader and fifth grader off to school today and they enter schools in classrooms fundamentally different. these kids have to think about that no child should have to think about. their survivor. that being said, i think today is a day to remember all of the good, all of the light that has come to this world since sandy hook. all of those families have
town. it s just a uniquely cataclysmic experience, and then within days, to have people with big mega phones in this country deny that your child ever died. to claim that you were an actor in some disgusting play. that started happening with days, within weeks of sandy hook, and the people who follow alex jones and his ilk started targeting these families. but it wasn t that it wasn t that these families could ignore if they wanted the conspiracy theoies that said sandy hook didn t happen. in fact, those people started hunting the families in sandy hook. as you mentioned. some of them had to move away. but you know what? they didn t just take it. they fought back. they sued alex joan, they won in court. and whether or not alex jones will actually pay the money ordered to pay that sent a clear message to anybody else who s thinking about spreading lies and conspiracies theories there is a price to be paid.
just political history, but a real shift. yeah. in america culturally over the past decade, the past 15 years, culminating in yesterday s signing by president biden of this legislation. yeah. think about that. an 80-year-old catholic man who became president of the united states who s lived a lot of life, had evolving positions on this. was out front actually in the obama administration on the issue of gay marriage signing into law, codifying at a federal level protections for gay marriage and interracial marriage. mara gay as you look at the scene there, a lot of this, of course, in response to the dobbs decision pap particular urgency around this for really an extraordinary scene yesterday at the white house. well, it is, and it s a nice reminder that actually the majority of the country is continuing to move forward. it s also just to be clear, i mean, we ve been living in this reality, many of us, where
kind of sit on his bum as he set up one of those alvarez goals. it was a thing of beauty watching the ball just stay at messi s feet as he danced around this defender, and i feel really happy for this guy who has, i think, just had this incredible career, and he s got this one aching gap in his resume, in this country that loves this game so, so much, and he seeed like he s on this mission and the team is built around him. everybody talks about the way in which messi kind of strolls through the game and makes these cameo appearances. where he walks and then does something utterly brilliant. pretty remarkable, isn t it, frank? he lays back. he sits there. he almost tries to be invisible and then in a flash he s made an extraordinary assist or scored a goal. quite different from ronaldo.
i think about the kids who were their age who survived in the school that day are juniors in high school right now, thinking about college. seniors in high school getting ready to go off and do big things and how this horrific tragedy completely reshaped the town. you know, joe biden came to our vigil last week commemorating the victims in sandy hook and all across the country. introduced by one of the survivors. introduced by a pretty amazing teenager who was a second grader at the time whose classroom was just across the hall and he said introducing joe biden she s alive today only because the shooter decided to take a right instead of a left, and i think it is important on a day like today. we have this number in sandy hook. 26, 26 students and educators, but that s really not an accurate way to describe the grief. to describe the trauma. so many of those teachers, those first responders who entered the school that day, those kids, they re lives are never, ever