POLK CITY, Fla. (WTSP) -- A Polk City woman who lost her son in the Pulse nightclub shooting hopes the U.S. is at a turning point for gun control.
Christine Leinonen was featured in a panel discussion with CBS News Wednesday morning, along with five other victims of gun violence.
While some of the panelists disagreed with her, Leinonen has been calling for a ban on assault weapons since her son’s death.
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“It's a living hell. My life is over,” she said in an interview with 10News after the CBS story aired. “I have a life sentence of grief. It's gone.”
Leinonen is a gun owner, but she argues assault weapons were made for war zones, not for the average person to use.
After seeing several mass shootings in the year and a half since the Pulse nightclub massacre, she sees the Parkland shooting as a turning point in the stalled gun control debate. Now that the students and other young people are speaking up, she's hopeful change is coming.
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“Three thousand young people who are directly affected by a mass shooting, that had to either run from the school, hide in closets, get shot at, have their friends get shot and killed. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of momentum,” she said.
Leinonen started a nonprofit in her son's name called The Dru Project. Every year, the non-profit gives out a donation in his honor.
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