Sandy Hook mom to Texas families following shooting: ‘Give yourself the space and patience to find a way through this’

NEWTOWN — On the day that 18 children and three adults were killed at a shooting at a Texas elementary school, mother Nicole Hockley had a message for their grieving parents.

“Give yourself the space and patience to find a way through this,” Hockley said on MSNBC Tuesday night. “It is a very dark path that you’re entering, I can’t lie about that, but there’s always a way through it to something positive.”

It’s pain the mother of Dylan Hockley, one of 26 killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting almost 10 years ago, knows acutely.

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She became even more emotional on CNN with Anderson Cooper when he asked her to talk about Dylan.

“I don’t know if I can tonight,” she said, shaking her head and teary-eyed.

Still, she said that it will be possible for the families of the victims in Texas to find joy again.

“It’s possible. It sure as heck isn’t easy,” Hockley said on CNN. “But I have a surviving son who I love with my whole life. He brings me joy, and doing something to honor Dylan to prevent other families from feeling this, as many as we can, I wouldn’t say that brings me joy, but it certainly brings me purpose”

Hockley, co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, an organization that aims to protect children from gun violence, already foresees the cycle of “thoughts and prayers” with no action that this shooting in Ulvalde, Texas will bring.

“While I’m hopeful and always hopeful that there’s going to be change, I just don’t know how many people, how many children have to die before politicians stop caring as much about their political careers as they do about their constituents and the lives of their children where they live, where they grow up because these shootings are everywhere,” she said on MSNBC.

She noted on CNN that people thought the Sandy Hook massacre would be “rock bottom.”

“Here we are again, almost 10 years later with another elementary school and the thousands of mass shootings that have happened in between,” Hockley said. “I don’t know how much more our country can take, and why we keep going through that same cycle over and over again of thoughts and prayers and lack of action.”

There are measures Congress could take, such as background checks or safe storage rules, that could make a difference, she said.

“How are children getting their hands on these weapons?” Hockley said on MSNBC. “It’s not about taking away the guns. It’s about being responsible with who can access them at what point.”

She said there are “courageous people” fighting for gun reform, but she can’t understand how others look at themselves in the mirror.

“I just wonder sometimes whether they even have a soul,” Hockley said.

The children who have lived through this gun violence have been “traumatized through our inaction.” They are the ones who will make change, not Congress.

“When I think about Sandy Hook, 10 years ago, these are kids now that this is all they’ve known their entire life, are school shootings and the psychological trauma and the impact of all that,” she said on MSNBC. “They’re the ones that are going to create the change because our Congress isn’t going to do it for them.”