Nicole Hockley, who lost her son in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, faced a row of television cameras on Tuesday. She and other Sandy Hook families were filing an appeal in their battle against the gun companies who had made the military-style rifle used to kill their children.

What was her reaction to Donald Trump’s victory, reporters asked her. Was she scared?

Hockley, composed and forceful, offered a reality check: even if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, Congress would not have passed gun control legislation.

“We’ve had a very committed gun violence prevention president in place for the last eight years, and we’re not seeing significant federal change,” she said.

“This is about bottom-up change, not top-down,” she told the cameras. “This is more about a community groundswell that’s needed.”

Hockley’s fight for gun violence prevention has been focused on state and local action – and having Trump in the White House did not change that strategy.

Obama, a passionate advocate for gun violence prevention, has “tried everything. He can’t get it passed,” she said in an in-depth interview with Guardian US.

When it comes to guns, “I still don’t think our country is ready yet for federal change,” she said. “I think there are still too many people that are uninformed or misinformed on this issue, that believe it’s never going to happen to them, that believe it has nothing to do with access to weapons.”

“This is not the time to bow out,” she said. “This is where we have to double down our efforts. Regardless of who’s in office, people are still dying every day, and there’s an opportunity to save lives.”



Hockley’s son Dylan was six years old when a disturbed young man shot his way through Dylan’s elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty first-graders and six educators were murdered. Dylan died in the arms of his classroom aide, who was also killed. A photograph of Dylan in a Superman T-shirt has become an icon in the fight for stricter gun control laws.

Dylan Hockley. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Hockley was among the family members who went to Washington, only weeks after their children were killed, to press senators to vote in favor of a compromise bill to tighten background checks on gun sales. The high-profile effort, backed by the White House, failed to attract enough support to overcome a potential filibuster in the Senate. This rejection of moderate gun control left many Americans stunned that political change on guns was impossible even after first-graders had been massacred.

Clinton’s loss, after a campaign where she had made gun violence prevention a central issue, had hit advocates hard, Hockley said.

“There’s still that shock and numbness from really strong gun violence prevention advocates,” Hockley said. Some advocates and donors are worried that “Nothing’s going to happen now,” saying, “I don’t want to waste my effort.”

“They’re grieving,” she said. “I know a bit about grief, and you do want to pull away.”

Without Clinton, the movement’s progress will be slower, she said. But Hockley said she had been heartened by victories on ballot measures in California, Nevada and Washington state last week, where majorities voted to impose stricter controls on guns and ammunition. And Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit advocacy group Hockley helped to found, has been seeing progress at the local level, in school districts across the country.

From the beginning, the group rejected the idea that real change in preventing gun violence and mass shootings could come from gun control policy victories alone. Unlike Clinton, the group decided not to fight for a federal ban on assault weapons like the one used at Sandy Hook. Unlike other leading gun control groups, the group does not endorse candidates for office.



Instead, Sandy Hook Promise has also been working with school districts across the country to spread a violence prevention program that teaches students to take action when they see signs of someone who might be about to harm themselves or others. The training programs have already reached more than one million people, Hockley said – and Sandy Hook Promise works closely with schools in both red and blue states, from Florida and Louisiana to Alaska and California.

Even parents and teachers who are strong gun rights advocates appreciate this kind of training, she said. In Louisiana, she met with a group of sheriffs who started out skeptical of a Sandy Hook parent – and ended up enthusiastic about having the program in local schools.

The need is obvious: when Hockley gives trainings at schools, students sometimes come up to her afterwards and tell her that they are thinking about self-harm, she said. She talks to them, she listens and she walks them over to a teacher or counselor who they trust to talk more.



“It kills you, you know?” she said. “You think: that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because those are the ones who come forward right then and there. There are so many others who need help.”

In Eau Claire, Michigan, she heard about a student seeing a Snapchat video of another student saying: “Don’t come to school on Monday, I’ve got a loaded gun.” A student told a parent, the parent informed law enforcement, and “the gun was found: potential tragedy averted,” she said.

“The only thing that keeps me going – I don’t care about anything else other than saving lives,” she said.

Sandy Hook Promise is about to hire its first political director in Ohio, where it will focus on drafting state legislation on gun violence prevention measures, including securing mental health funding and creating gun violence restraining orders. In Congress, Sandy Hook Promise advocates for mental health reform legislation.



“When I do think about the NRA, the opposition, it took them decades to build that base, and to get organized, and to have deep relationships with their team members,” she said. “They’re best-in-class in organizing. We haven’t been as organized on the other side.”

With the National Rifle Association’s candidate heading to the White House, Hockley said she is concerned about federal right-to-carry reciprocity legislation. This Trump-endorsed national law would eviscerate local gun carrying restrictions. If passed, the legislation might mean that tourists from other states would be allowed to carry their guns around New York City.



If Trump follows up on his campaign rhetoric about eliminating gun-free zones and pushing guns in schools, “That I’ll fight hard against,” she said. “Schools are no place for guns. If he comes out and tries to make that happen, there are a heck of a lot of people who will fight against that … I think that would be a very, very unpopular move.”

Trump’s second amendment platform does not mention guns and schools, though he has pledged to end gun-free zones on military bases.

Asked at the Tuesday press conference if she would agree to meet with Trump to talk about addressing gun violence, as she has met with Obama, Hockley paused. “I will never say no to having an open conversation with anybody regardless of their stated or unstated beliefs, because I believe without conversation we’re not going to see progress,” she said. “I can’t foresee a reason that the president elect would have any desire to meet with me, so I’m not anticipating that.”

Hockley was announcing her appeal of a lawsuit on behalf of several Sandy Hook victims’ families that argued gun companies were negligent to market an AR-15 style rifle to the general public. Last month, a Connecticut judge struck down the lawsuit that nine victims’ families and one survivor had filed against the manufacturer, distributor and seller of the rifle used in the shooting.

Hockley is involved in the lawsuit privately, not as part of her work for Sandy Hook Promise.

Gun company lawyers had argued that the companies were protected by a 2005 federal law designed precisely to shield gun companies from being held liable when a legally sold, non-defective gun is later used in a crime. Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, had killed his mother and then taken her guns, which she had purchased legally.

On 14 October, Judge Barbara Bellis of the Connecticut superior court ruled that the companies were protected by the federal shield law.

Interest in the case had clearly dwindled by the time lawyers announced their appeal on Tuesday. At an earlier press conference at Koskoff’s law office in February, local and national media outlets had packed the room to ask questions of a line of victims’ family members. On Tuesday, in the pouring rain, only a handful of media outlets showed up.

Hockley, who has been working full-time on gun violence prevention since March 2013, just weeks after her son was killed, said she is trying to learn how to prepare better for the long fight. Kickboxing and seeing a therapist both help, she said.

“Self-care has not been a priority for me, which is a shame, because this is going to be the rest of my life,” she said. “So I need to start focusing on how I’m going to ensure that I maintain the stamina and the emotional wellbeing to do this.

“I do think it’s going to take two generations.”