Matt Holden graduated last year, with the Newtown High School Class of 2024. His was the class that lost 20 fellow classmates 12½ years earlier, on 12/14, when an armed man stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School and took the lives of 20 children and six adult women with a Bushmaster rifle before killing himself.

As with so many others, the day changed Holden. He was a few classrooms away from the ones where his classmates and their teachers were killed. Every time the news breaks of another mass shooting in this country, the 18-year-old knows firsthand how lives have changed.

“The first thing I think of, especially when it’s a shooting that reminds me of Sandy Hook — like Uvalde, when it was an elementary school, or FSU, where a Parkland survivor went through the shooting there — is how awful it is. There’s another traumatized school just like mine was,” Holden told The Newtown Bee April 21. He is just about done with his freshman year at George Washington University. Next week he will be one of three speakers — two Voices of Hope — during the 2025 CT Against Gun Violence (CAGV) “Be the Hope” Benefit Luncheon.

Holden will share his story, including why he feels it is important to continue seeking legislature and reform toward gun violence prevention.

“When you’re younger, you don’t notice things that are different about you from other kids who haven’t gone through what you’ve gone through,” Holden shared. “Looking back at it, I realize now there were so many things in my childhood — just anxieties, or fears I had, or things that made it worse, or things that still pick at me today.

“You think about it every single day,” he said. “Good days, bad days, it doesn’t matter — that is just who you are, it’s part of your life now.”

Holden said he can’t help thinking about the others who, like him, will spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, worried about the next shooting.

“In this country, that’s absolutely true and it’s horrific,” he said.

Taking A Stand

Holden joined Jr Newtown Action Alliance during his senior year in high school. As graduation loomed and the idea of receiving his diploma without his 20 slain classmates neared, he and others were given an opportunity to speak with Good Morning America on the topic.

“From there it blossomed into more interviews,” Holden said. There was also a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., over the summer, when he and others met with 20-30 Congresspeople while lobbying for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLACAA, he said.

“We got a lot of good work done there. We got 20 or 25 co-sponsors on the bill” to repeal PLACAA, “which prevents gun companies from being sued,” he said.

Holden’s gun violence prevention work lessened slightly when his studies at GWU began, but he is committed to remaining involved, he said. He attended a few NAA meetings during his first semester at college, spoke during a December vigil in the nation’s capitol, and he recently accepted a spring internship with Congresswoman Jahana Hayes.

It was during the 2024 National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence that CAGV Executive Director Earl Bloodworth first saw Holden speak.

“He was amazing,” Bloodworth said. “Doing my due diligence, I’ve now seen some of his interviews as he was graduating high school, and one of the things he said that sticks with me is, ‘We have to keep fighting because thoughts and prayers are not enough. While we have hope, hope requires action.’

“I am wholeheartedly in tune and in alignment with that,” Bloodworth said. “As he was speaking about people not giving ground, and not giving up, there was a bill that got put into committee, and then got out of committee, during this session when folks were looking to go back to increasing the capacity of cartridges, from 10 to 15, which was reduced after the Sandy Hook tragedy. He’s right. We’ve gotta stay vigilant, and we’ve got to keep fighting.”

Holden said disappointingly, he sees people at the state and national levels who are willing to “walk back these common sense pieces of legislation” that have been put into place.

“For the rest of my life, I’m probably going to have to keep vigilant but it’s what you have to do. Our friends’ and families’ lives are worth that,” he stated.

Holden’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a GWU freshman and “gun violence prevention activist.” When asked what that latter phrase means to him, he said it’s simple: “I don’t want people to die unnecessarily.

“I’m someone who’s going to go out there and speak up for friends I lost in Sandy Hook, and for the people I don’t want to lose in my future,” he added.

“I’ve spent a lot of time this past year lobbying politicians, talking with media, working for this cause, and the way I see it, that cause is part of who I am for the rest of my life. I was at Sandy Hook. I know some people want to try to not deal with that, but I feel personally that you can’t drop this fight. Until our kids, our family members, our friends stop getting killed in our streets, I think you need people to be gun violence prevention activists and take that stand.”

CAGV Spring Luncheon

“Be the Hope,” says Bloodworth, is one-part fundraiser, and one-part “engaging with people we haven’t engaged with in some time. It’s to let folks know what we’ve been doing during the current legislative session, especially the bills we’re focused on supporting and some of the ones we’ve crafted ourselves with our lobbyists.”

The event’s three speakers have all been “directly impacted by gun violence,” Bloodworth said.

Rob Wilcox is the keynote speaker for the event. Wilcox served as deputy director of the first ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. He has worked closely with Senator Chris Murphy on gun violence prevention policy and is a Wesleyan University graduate.

The luncheon’s second Voice of Hope this year will be professional orator and social activist Yexandra Diaz of New Haven, who is committed to raising awareness about social injustices through spoken word.

Bloodworth said CAGV deals with “a very tough subject.” Gun violence and how people relate to a mass shooting, community violence, partner violence, loss of life or harm caused by unsecured firearms will all be part of the presentation, he said.

There is positivity to look forward to as well.

“If you look at the numbers in Connecticut year over year,” Bloodworth said, “in the last year we’ve seen some reductions. This past summer in some of what we consider the ‘hotspots’ in the state of Connecticut for community violence, we saw one of the first reductions we’ve seen in quite some time. We hope to maintain that momentum.”

Unfortunately, suicide deaths by firearms has also increased, Bloodworth also said.

“That’s something else we want to keep an eye on, and reduce anywhere we can,” he said.

The 2025 Be the Hope Benefit Luncheon will also honor former CAGV Director of Communications Jonathan Perloe, who has retired from CAGV after a decade with the organization. It will be the first opportunity for many people to meet Bloodworth, who was hired for the organization’s top spot seven months ago.

In a pre-event release, CAGV Board Chair Melissa Kane said the annual luncheon is also “a celebration of our community’s resilience and commitment to creating a safer Connecticut and protecting the progress we’ve made in our state.”

Tickets for CAGV’s “Be the Hope” Benefit Luncheon are $250 per person. They are available through cagv.org.

Registration will open at 11:30 am, with the event scheduled for noon to 2 pm on May 15. The Inn at Longshore is on Compo Road South in Westport. Contact CAGV at info@cagv.org or 203-955-1009 for additional information.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.