Ten years ago, fashion magazine Marie Claire published a series exploring women’s relationships with guns and gun violence. Now a decade later, they’ve returned to the subject to find out what has and hasn’t changed.
What hasn’t changed, except for increasing in number, are the survivors, who wrote for the magazine in their own words.
Kimberly Mata-Rubio, who lost her daughter, Lexi, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.
“My husband and I attended an awards ceremony for our daughter Lexi, who was in fourth grade. She received the All A Honor Roll and the Good Citizen award. Our last photo with her was at 10:52 a.m.
“A little after 11:30 a.m. that day, an 18-year-old who had access to an AR-15 walked into Lexi’s classroom and murdered her, along with 18 other students and two teachers.
“I know that it’s easier and it feels better to think that this won’t happen to you, but the reality is that the likelihood is it will. We, as Americans, are not safe. Our kids are not safe in school. We’re not safe at concerts, at churches, at grocery stores, at parades, at movie theaters. We’re not safe, and something has to change.“
Mia Tretta, who was shot and her best friend, Dominic, who was killed at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California on November 14, 2019:
“I had to heal from multiple things at the same time: losing my best friend, losing my entire sense of safety, and trying to physically heal. That’s been a decade-long process. I’m still dealing with the effects of being shot in the stomach, such an important area of my body. One of the main things that I did to help my healing was advocacy, trying to prevent this from happening to someone else.
“I came to Brown University primarily because it felt like such a safe place. But then on December 13, I was in my dorm and started getting hundreds of texts about an active shooter on campus. It ended up with two students dead.
“We all live in this naive world where we think gun violence will never happen to us. For me, that got taken away in 2019. But then I had to tell myself it’ll never happen again—and then it did.”
Mayra Alvear, whose daughter, Amanda, was killed on June 12, 2016 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
“The trauma is enormous. It affects me, my husband, my mom, all of us emotionally and physically. I had to stop working to get medical operations to deal with the effects of the stress and anxiety. My grandchildren were so scared, especially when they kept seeing school shootings in the news, that they asked to be homeschooled out of fear.
“Gun violence affects so much more than the inner circle and immediate family of the victims. It’s a chain reaction that goes on and on.
“I just worry that gun violence will never end in this country. I respect the Second Amendment, but there needs to be regulation. The majority of this country wants change. Let’s ban assault weapons.”
Those stories are echoed again and again by survivors, just as they have been for the past quarter of a century, following the Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado in 1999.
The Marie Claire series features something that has changed: “a new wave of female social media personalities became the firearm industry’s most valuable weapon.” They’re called “gunfluencers,” and they have millions of followers on social media.
“Every new woman who buys a gun is a potential new follower; every new creator who makes the lifestyle look aspirational brings more women in. It’s a cycle that is remaking an industry, a culture, and—depending on whom you ask—the safety of American women.” — Marie Claire
The industry isn’t just finding a new audience, it’s also circumventing regulations on the advertising of their products. A gun manufacturer can’t advertise their weapons on Instagram, but a gunfluencer can post videos showing off the guns, tagging the manufacturer, and reach millions.
We are up against a powerful adversary that is always finding new ways to sell death and destruction. But we are also powerful, and we are making progress.
Thank you for standing with us and for believing that saving lives is worth sustained effort.
With hope,
March For Our Lives
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