Erica Lafferty lost her mother on Dec. 14, 2012.

The late Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, then principal of Sandy Hook Elementary, was killed when 2o-year-old Adam Lanza stormed into the building and fatally shot 20 children and six staff members, before shooting himself in the head.

That was days after the final Thanksgiving she and her daughter would share.

As Lafferty wrote in USA Today on Friday, “This Thanksgiving, I sat at a dinner table with an empty seat. It’s the very seat where my mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, should be. Smiling, laughing and enjoying a holiday meal with her daughters and grandchildren. .?.?. My heart — and my dinner table — reflect the hole in my life that will never be repaired.”

Painful as the experience has been, it led Lafferty to her current calling as an advocate for gun safety.

It must feel like salt in an open wound, then, when someone denies that the Sandy Hook massacre ever happened in the first place. But that’s exactly what conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a Donald Trump booster, has claimed repeatedly. See for yourself.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/daughter-of-newtown-victim-to-trump-denounce-alex-jones-sandy-hook-denier/ar-AAkQteq?li=BBnb7Kz

This Thanksgiving, I sat at a dinner table with an empty seat. It’s the very seat where my mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, should be. Smiling, laughing and enjoying a holiday meal with her daughters and grandchildren. Instead, my mom wasn’t there because nearly four years ago, she was murdered in Newtown, Conn., along with five of her colleagues and 20 first-graders. That day, as the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, she died a hero trying to protect her innocent students.

My heart — and my dinner table — reflect the hole in my life that will never be repaired. And while I’ve chosen a path of gun safety advocacy that not everyone agrees with, some opponents of gun violence prevention follow a different, darker path. A fringe movement of “Sandy Hook truthers” promotes hateful conspiracy theories that the shooting never took place. My Thanksgiving table tells a different story. And so does the reality of the families who had their loved ones ripped out of their arms by senseless gun violence.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/11/25/donald-trump-sandy-hook-alex-jones-column/94335420/