Fred Guttenberg’s daughter, Jaime, was one of 17 people killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
He spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, just hours after 18 children and one adult were killed in Uvalde, Texas.
“This has been a horrific day. It doesn’t matter how much time passes, it brings you right back to that minute. I can’t stop thinking about these families today who need to figure out how they’re going to bury their children, who need to figure out how they’re going to console their other children, who need to figure out how they’re going to deal with the reality that they had other children likely in that school who are going to have PTSD, who need to figure out a eulogy,” Guttenberg said.
Guttenberg said news of another shooting is infuriating “because all of these instances we know the next one is going to happen because we haven’t done anything to fix it.”
“I’m just so broken. What’s even worse, it’s not like this country doesn’t want to fix this,” he said.
When asked what message he’d give to families in Uvalde, Guttenberg quoted something his rabbi told him at his daughter’s funeral: “We don’t move on, we move forward.”
“I want everyone to know that they are loved and that they are going to go forward. It’s what I call a ‘new normal,'” he said. “But the next few minutes, hours, days are going to be brutal.”
