Community marks 10 years since Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's been a decade since Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden sent their young children off to Sandy Hook Elementary School on what they thought would be another routine day.
"Dylan was this gorgeous little boy with these gigantic blue eyes, he was just an absolute joy. I still can't believe it's been 10 years," Nicole Hockley said.
"On the last day of Daniel's life, before he went to the school bus, he had asked me to show him something on the piano. I taught him how to play jingle bells, that was the last few hours of his life," Mark Barden said.
On the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, 20 children and six educators were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary by a young man using an AR-15 assault rifle.
A month later, these parents helped launch Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit focused on protecting America's children from gun violence.
Its Know the Signs programs teach children and adults how to identify at-risk behaviors and intervene to help and they do believe the program is helping.
More than 2,300 schools nationwide use the program and the group says it's helped to stop at least 11 credible planned school shooting attacks.
"We're focused on what we call upstream violence prevention, how do we at the earlier end of that scale intervene and get help," Hockley said.
Legislators from across the country, including Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy helped to pass the bi-partisan Safer Communities Act. It was signed into law just one month after 19 students and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
It includes:
- Enhanced background checks for people 18 to 21
- Invests money into mental health resources
- Red flag laws which allow authorities to take guns from people deemed dangerous
"It doesn't solve the epidemic but it saves thousands of lives," Sen. Chris Murphy said.
Sweeping gun legislation has been made in the Tri-State area since mass shootings like Sandy Hook, Parkland and Uvalde.
In New Jersey, after the Uvalde shooting, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law the 3.0 gun safety bill, a package of gun safety measures to hold bad actors in the firearms industry accountable, closing loopholes for importing out-of-state firearms and strengthening the state's firearm permitting laws.
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf has championed a number of gun safety measures including:
- Declaring gun violence a public health crisis
- Promoting responsible gun storage
- Advocating for increased funding for gun violence prevention programs
Delaware has also enacted new gun safety legislation that prohibits so-called "bump stocks" rapid-fire gun attachments. They've also closed a loophole allowing the state enough time to now conduct background checks.
Even with expansive gun safety measures in place around the country, there have been more than 4,200 mass shootings since Sandy Hook, 38 of them at schools.