The first graders who survived Sandy Hook will vote in their first presidential election

Grace Fischer survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School by staying quiet and huddled, as her first grade teacher softly read “The Nutcracker.”

Then she spent the rest of her childhood watching mostly from the sidelines as dozens of similar shootings shattered other schools across the country.

Now 18, Fischer will vote in her first presidential election in November. It’s a monumental moment, nearly 12 years after she endured one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, and it has given her and her peers hope that they can effect change.

“It’s a huge turning point in our lives,” said Fischer, who was 6 when a gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012.

Activists at the time hoped the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, would become a watershed moment and spark significant legislative action, said Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, the gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords — a shooting survivor.

“The country was forced to look at this issue in a visceral, terrible way,” Brown said. “The loss of all of those kids in their classroom was so inconceivable and so horrific that even the politicians and the folks who had been trying to act like this wasn’t a growing problem in this country were unable to deny it for the first time.”

States have since passed hundreds of gun-safety laws, but major federal bills that have been proposed, including bans on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, have failed.

After the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, the Trump administration imposed a federal ban on bump stocks, which are gun accessories that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more quickly. But the Supreme Court overturned the