Mom of Girl Killed in 2018 Texas School Shooting Launches Bid for Congress
Since Rhonda Hart's 14-year-old daughter was killed at Santa Fe High School, the Army veteran has become an outspoken advocate for enacting gun safety measures
As a middle-class mom, Rhonda Hart says she understands the economic difficulties many south Texans are facing. “I have lived paycheck to paycheck. I get it.”
As a veteran of the U.S. Army, she says she would love better benefits and access to more doctors.
And as a mother who lost her 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, in the 2018 school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, she would like stronger gun laws to protect other kids and adults from suffering the same fate.
For all of these reasons Hart, a Democrat, launched a bid for the U.S. House in Texas' 14th congressional district, challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Randy Weber. “This has been a long time coming,” says Hart.
In the years since her daughter and nine others were killed on May 18, 2018, at Santa Fe High School, Hart has worked to curb gun violence, particularly by pushing for safe gun storage laws in Texas and in Washington, D.C., which she visits frequently.
In 2022, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the Kimberly Vaughan Safe Storage of Firearms Act, which centered around education for safe storage and would require some gun manufacturers to include information about safe storage when selling weapons.
She was elated when it passed in the U.S. House in the summer of 2022. It did not, however, pass in the Senate.
“We may not have had the Santa Fe shooting if the dad had properly secured his guns,” she says in reference to her daughter's teenage killer, who used his father's weapons to murder eight students and two educators. (He is charged with capital murder and other crimes, but remains held under court order at a state-run hospital until he is deemed fit for trial.)
Shortly after the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Hart reached out to victims’ families to help them get through the nightmare of losing a loved one in a mass shooting.
“Those people are my friends,” she says. “They're family. I made connections with them as soon as I could after the shooting.
“You need to have those connections with other parents that are in the same club as you are. It helps boost your morale. It helps you feel like you're not alone in this. It's super important. I would not be able to get through this without my little network of gun violence survivors.”
Related: Uvalde School Shooting: Remembering the Victims, 1 Year Later
While Hart had long considered running for office, she definitively decided to launch a congressional bid after meeting with Rep. Weber in the summer of 2022. She and several members of the nonprofit gun violence prevention group Newtown Action Alliance had traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the Protect Our Kids Act, a gun violence prevention bill proposed in the wake of Uvalde that included the act named after her daughter.
“We sat down with [Weber] to talk and said, ‘Are you going to support the bill?’ and he said, ‘Nope,’” she recalls. “And then later in that conversation, I asked him if he had even read the bill. And he said, ‘No.’”
Hart says she was taken aback. “His primary job is to read bills before voting on them. I just thought, ‘This isn't working for me. And I wonder how many other people in the district feel that way?’”
She will soon find out, as she builds out her campaign to unseat Weber, a former businessman who has represented the 14th congressional district since 2013. Largely on the coastline, the district reaches from Beaumont to Lake Jackson, including a thin strip of Galveston. It's a mostly Republican area.
Related: One Year After the Santa Fe Shooting Massacre a Victim's Mom Looks Back on That Terrible Day
In a statement sent to PEOPLE, a spokesperson for Weber’s campaign said, "We respect everyone's right to participate in the political arena. Randy remains focused on his proven record of championing conservative values and fighting for the issues that impact Texas and our community."
Hart says she is ready to take on the challenge, noting that her activism has made her "well-connected across the state and across the country."
Courtesy of Rhonda Hart
Kamala Harris and Rhonda HartAmong the Democratic heavy hitters Hart has sought advice from are former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Related: President Joe Biden Signs Bipartisan Gun Safety Bill into Law: 'Lives Will Be Saved'
As indicated during his meeting with Hart, Rep. Weber voted against Protect Our Kids Act and against the sweeping Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Congress passed in 2022. But Hart thinks the two parties can come to a compromise to keep people safe.
“We need a universal background check system,” she says. “We need universally defined safe storage.”
She doesn’t want to take guns away from people, she says.
With AR-15-style weapons, for example, “Maybe we raise the age requirement,” she says. “Maybe we do a deeper background check. You keep what you already have.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.
She is also interested in seeing a "human immigration system," bettering education, and prioritizing veteran’s issues and women’s issues.
“I believe that a woman should be able to make all the choices about her own healthcare, from an ingrown toenail to a sore knee and everything in between,” she says. “Just understand us, please.”
To express your opinion on gun reform proposals to your own representatives in Congress, you can look them up and contact them here: congress.gov/members
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
