Love is powerful thing. Just ask Sen. Rob Portman, who put himself at considerable political peril by embracing gay marriage after learning that someone he knows and loves is gay. It is in this light that his recent vote to block common-sense gun violence prevention legislation is so profoundly...

My Newtown moment came in 1999 as I sat at the funeral of my former basketball coach, Dave Sanders. He was murdered along with 12 students at Columbine High School. It was an overbearingly sad service as I hugged former teachers, faces red and swollen from days of crying. Just like the teachers at...

I am a mom from Newtown, and my younger daughter is six years old. Before December 14, 2012, I would have described myself differently: political moderate, high school science teacher. But in the six months since that terrible day, when 20 of my daughter’s peers and six of her teacher’s colleagues...

On November 28, 2012, my life changed forever. I lost my youngest child – a son – to gun violence. He was 26-years-old, married, and had a two-year-old daughter with another little girl on the way. I don’t know all the details surrounding his death, only that he was leaving a corner store in...