The mass shootings that have rocked communities across the country in recent years — from Blacksburg, Virginia, to Tuscon, Arizona, to Aurora, Colorado, to Oak Creek, Wisconsin, to Newtown, Connecticut — have left a well-documented trail of carnage and grief.
But those tragedies and others like them also have produced what could prove to be the most formidable, fervent advocates in the looming fight over U.S. gun-control policy: Survivors who know what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of a mass murderer and outspoken families who have lost a loved one to gun violence.
Stephen Barton is among them.