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Newtown mom pleads for gun control at White House

WASHINGTON (AP) The mother of a Newtown, Conn., shooting victim is making a deeply personal plea from the White House for all Americans to take action on gun violence.

Francine Wheeler's 6-year-old son, Ben, was killed inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. She's stepping in for President Barack Obama to deliver the president's weekly radio and Internet address. She is the first person to deliver the address other than Obama or Vice President Joe Biden since the two took office in 2009.

 

A video of the address will be posted here.

Wheeler says "I’ve heard people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded.  But not for us.  To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday.   And in the four months since we lost our loved ones, thousands of other Americans have died at the end of a gun.  Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief."

 

She asks for help to do something, in her words, ``before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.''

 

Wheeler then talked about the place where she heard the news about her son.

 

"Sometimes, I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse for the boy who would never come home – the same firehouse that was home to Ben’s Tiger Scout Den 6.  But other times, I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do – for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon."

In the Republican address, congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana criticizes Obama's budget blueprint as a blank check for more spending and debt.

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