Benefield: Dad who lost a son at Sandy Hook Elementary shooting marks Father’s Day with action

Sunday marks the 10th Father’s Day Mark Barden has spent without his son, Daniel.

Barden said he’ll spend it with his wife, Jackie, and their daughter, Natalie, 20, in the same home they raised all three of their children.

Their son James, 22, lives in Boston.

Mark Barden will have a cup of coffee, relax and “bask in their love.”

But Daniel, his youngest child, won’t be there.

Daniel Barden was 7 and a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when he was killed by a gunman who murdered 20 schoolchildren and six staff members on Dec. 14, 2012.

It was a day that was so horrific, many among us believed it would end America’s obsession with guns, would end our resistance to laws restricting access to weapons of war, would end partisan debate over something as seemingly straightforward as keeping kids and schools — and grocery stores and movie theaters and street corners and nightclubs and music festivals — safe.

It didn’t.

Today there are more guns in America than Americans.

Our nation’s roughly 330 million people own more than 393.3 million weapons, according to a 2018 report by the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based organization.

Unfathomably, the tragedy in Sandy Hook didn’t change us. But it changed Mark Barden.

Barden turned his unimaginable pain into action, into his life’s work. Tragedy and transformation is a phrase used.

He is co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit advocacy and education group that teaches youth and adults about warning signs and at-risk behavior. Programs called “Start with Hello” and “Say Something” foster inclusion, work to break down social isolation and give people tools to ask for help if there is fear of self-harm or harming others.

The focus is early intervention and prevention.

“We know there are warning signs, before someone hurts themselves or someone else,” he said. “There almost always are.”

The group gets a 100% accountability rating from Charity Navigator.

“We are preventing other families from having to endure this pain,” he said. “We have a model that works.”

Which is why this nation’s daily tally of gun violence, and worse, school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, last month that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers are so searing for Barden.

He has lived it. And in a way, he lives it again as it happens over and over.

“It’s crushing,” he said. “My wife and I found ourselves kind of tracking along, the moments and the hours and days after that tragedy and relating it to our experience … our hearts break for those families.”

These milestone days, Father’s Day, and Mother’s Day, and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Halloween and the first day of school and the last day of school — they all feel different for Barden.

But Father’s Day?

“A day set aside to remember your role as a father and your beautiful children,” he said. “It’s melancholy, it’s bittersweet. It comes with all of that.”

But Barden says he owes it to Daniel to do the work he does, to talk about Daniel in a way that honors who he was and the person he was going to be.

He was the kid who moved earthworms from hot sidewalks. The kid who transported carpenter ants from the house to the lawn. The kid who mimicked the yard work his dad did, so he could feel helpful.

For Barden, a professional musician who spent his days at home with Daniel, his younger son’s presence is in every corner of his home and every inch of the yard.

“I look at my driveway and I think of little Daniel, with a big chunk of wood tied to the back of his tricycle,” he said. “He says, ‘You are always hauling wood, dad, I want to help.’”

‘It’s a start’

Barden works every day to create a culture among young people where people know warning signs and know the next steps to take when they see them.

His focus is nurturing and healing.

But he monitors our nation’s lack of progress toward any meaningful change, too.

Last week he sounded hopeful about the Senate framework for more gun regulation, which if successful, will be the first meaningful change in decades.

Critics say it falls well short of what is necessary. Barden chooses a more hopeful take.

“I believe it’s a start. It’s not a whole lot … but it’s a start,” he said. “I think it’s important to recognize that it’s a start that comes from a bipartisan coalition.”

But that’s not to say that Barden doesn’t want more.

“Teddy bears and toy guns are regulated more than actual guns in this country,” he said.

But he believes change can be made while honoring the Second Amendment.

“There are more guns than people in this country. It’s never going to happen that they are going to round up all the guns and take them away. That’s not going to happen,” he said.

That said, he wants universal background checks for all buyers, not just buyers in some situations. He wants secure storage laws. He wants red flag laws that allow family members and others to report worrisome behaviors of gun owners and can result in their weapons being temporarily removed.

But weapons of war? Like the one used to kill Daniel and to kill the kids and teachers at Robb Elementary School last month in Uvalde?

“I have a hard time finding a practical application for that kind of firepower in civilian use,” he said. “Those rounds will go through walls.”

I asked Barden about the growing push to make public images of these murders, to show the American public what is happening in our schools, on our streets and on our watch.

People point to the decision Mamie Till made in 1955 to open her son Emmett’s casket, to show the world how her 14-year-old son was murdered.

It was a moment that helped ignite the civil rights movement.

No, Barden said.

“I feel like if the shock and trauma of knowing that fourth graders and first graders and high school students are being hunted and shot to death isn’t enough to bring you around and get engaged in this, I’m not sure anything will,” he said.

‘There’s a role for everyone’

Barden asks those of us who haven’t endured what he has to hold on to our pain and hold on to our outrage. Not to move on, but to take action.

“We have an out-of-control shooting epidemic,” he said. “There’s a role for everyone.”

“Help a gun violence prevention group with your time or your dollars,” he said. “Call your legislators. Ask your family and your friends and everyone you know to take action. You don’t have to give up your day job but doing nothing should not be an option.”

If the so-called modest framework on gun regulation is a good start but not enough, call your legislators.

Call Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. Call Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. Call U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla.

Get busy. It’s not Barden’s job, it’s ours.

It’s an affront and an additional injustice that we ask Mark Barden and countless other victims of gun violence who have endured the unthinkable to then lead us to a new way.

We can’t ask them to be the light in our darkness.

We owe it to Mark Barden and to Daniel to be better and to do better. Take action.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.