Fred Guttenberg Reveals How Joe Biden Helped After Daughter Was Killed – Hollywood Life

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Fred Guttenberg‘s viral battle cry after he misplaced his daughter Jaime within the college taking pictures at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty on February 14, 2018, reached the properties and hearts of practically each American, together with, on the time, former Vice President Joe Biden. “It hit me, this was gun violence. And I stated, ‘This time, gun violence got here to the flawed group and messed with the flawed dad,” Fred recalled on the HollywoodLife Podcast. “I walked in my home that evening, after that vigil, and I stated, ‘I don’t know the way I’m going to do that, however I’m going to interrupt that f-ing gun foyer.’ And it grew to become my mission. And later that week, I received a name from now-President Joe Biden.”

Following his impassioned speech on the vigil in Parkland, FL, Fred remembered screening a number of calls from household, associates, information retailers, activists, political figures, and past. “I wasn’t answering my cellphone if I didn’t have the quantity,” he defined. “I received a random name round 1:30 within the afternoon someday, and he left a message, and he simply stated, ‘Hey, Fred, that is Joe Biden and I’d like to speak to you. In case you’re , I’ll name you again at precisely six o’clock, and in the event you decide up and also you need to speak nice, if not, I perceive.” To the mourning father’s shock, the now-POTUS referred to as again at 6 PM sharp, and the 2 “ended up having such a tremendous dialog for about 45 to 50 minutes.”

“Joe Biden is aware of grief,” Fred informed HL, recalling that the POTUS talking to him whereas on his option to an occasion for the Beau Biden Basis, honoring his late son. “Sooner or later he requested me, ‘So, what’s your plan?’ I stated, ‘I don’t have a plan. I simply know I need to break that f-ing gun foyer.’ He stated, ‘You’ll, you are able to do it. He began speaking to me about mission and function, and that dialog is once I realized I’ve a mission and a function.”

The New York native revealed that previous to the Parkland college taking pictures, he had taken a break from work after caring for his brother who misplaced his battle to 9/11-related most cancers. “I used to be going loopy, I didn’t know what to do. I’m not good at waking up and never having a plan. So, I used to be beginning to search for a mission, a function, after which my daughter was killed,” Fred remembered. “When Joe Biden stated that to me, it stopped the whole lot else in its tracks and have become clear to me this was the one factor that made sense of what I can do going ahead. And it’s been that method since.”

Fred has since devoted himself to ‘breaking the f-ing gun foyer,’ and he’s made a big dent in it just lately, working in tandem with many activists and President Joe Biden to signal into regulation the primary gun management invoice in practically 30 years. Based on The New York Occasions, the bipartisan gun invoice “will develop the background test system for potential gun patrons underneath the age of 21, giving authorities as much as 10 enterprise days to look at juvenile and psychological well being data. It units apart thousands and thousands of {dollars} so states can fund intervention applications, similar to psychological well being and drug courts, and perform so-called pink flag legal guidelines that enable authorities to quickly confiscate weapons from any particular person discovered by a choose to be too harmful to own them.”

“A good friend of mine who’s working for Congress described the invoice as needed, however not adequate, and I believe that sums it up,” Fred informed HL of the brand new invoice. “Whereas I wanted we’d have raised the age to [purchase a gun] to 21, we couldn’t get all of the votes wanted to do this. However now, having a mechanism with which to place extra consideration on these underneath 21 who’re attempting to purchase these weapons, and lengthen the importance of the background checks and join regulation enforcement and the FBI as a part of that course of will completely cease younger individuals in a second of disaster from shopping for a weapon that they might use to commit hurt.”

“For 30 years, these on the opposite aspect all the time knew and stated, ‘You’ll by no means get something handed.’ And so they knew it. They had been proper. However we’ve damaged by means of that wall,” he smiled. “It’s not about whether or not or not we are able to get something handed. Now it’s solely about what’s potential. what extra we are able to do to avoid wasting lives. That’s what that is all about. This isn’t about limiting rights of gun homeowners. That’s a bunch of BS. That is about saving lives.”