My Favorite Mason

Stephen Barton was on a cross-country trip when he was shot at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shootings. Oddly enough Stephen lives about ten minutes from Newtown, Connecticut.

The story is that Stephen Barton and a friend were riding their bicycles west from Virginia Beach to San Francisco on a trip they’d been planning for about three years when they decided to go to a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

About 20 minutes into the movie, a gunman opened fire from the front-right corner of the theater where they were sitting, when Barton was hit he fell to the ground.

He would learn that he had been shot in the neck, struck by shrapnel on his right arm and chest, and his face was cut up. Debris was removed during surgery, and he was put on a breathing tube.

Now at home in Southbury, Connecticut, Barton has found personal ties to the victims of another horrific mass shooting.

“Even now I’m discovering personal connections to the elementary school, just people I know who either were working there or knew people who have been killed,” he said. “I never would have thought in a thousand years that this community, this small community right down the road from where I grew up would be affected by gun violence in this way.”

12 people were reportedly killed and 58 were injured in the shooting in Aurora.

26 were reportedly killed by Adam Lanza inside Sandy Hook School, Connecticut State Police said. Adam Lanza’s own mother, was found dead at the family’s home.

Barton has said both experiences have affected him profoundly.

“I just struggle to sometimes, you know, just feel safe publicly at the movies and now I guess at school. I don’t know, it’s- it’s a slow process of healing that you have to go through and it’s continuous at least for me personally it’s going to last for a long time,” he said.

Since the shootings Barton has joined the media circus pushing to disarm all Americans.

“Our country is long overdue for a serious discussion about guns about mental health,” he said. “There’s a way to balance our second amendment right to bear arms against public safety.”

Since his experience in Aurora, Barton has done outreach and policy research for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which helped produce a gun control commercial, it is a 30-second TV spot, in it Barton urges people to ask themselves during the debates which candidate has a plan to stop gun violence.

The commercial was filmed inside an empty movie theater, Barton talks about his experience during the shooting as photos are shown of jagged gunshot wounds to his face and neck.

“I was lucky. In the next four years, 48,000 Americans won’t be so lucky, because they’ll be murdered with guns in the next president’s term, enough to fill over 200 theaters,” Barton said in the commercial.

“Our country is long overdue for a serious discussion about guns about mental health,” he said. “There’s a way to balance our second amendment right to bear arms against public safety.”

“I’m hopeful that these children would not have died in vain.”

Sandy Hooks Stephen Barton Shot In Batman Movie

Aurora victim_ Doing nothing on GUN CONTROL

Witness ‘I thought this might be the end’

Stephen Barton, Aurora Shooting Survivor, Lives Just Minutes from Sandy Hook

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