Can there be a US where kids aren’t shot in schools? This gun safety leader thinks so

Emma Brown, 30, is executive director of Giffords and plans to mobilize Americans for the 2024 elections around gun safety

Emma Brown was five years old in 1999, when news broke that two student shooters had attacked Columbine high school. She was in elementary school when the federal assault weapons ban expired, and she was a high school student when a gunman shot then congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others outside a grocery store in Arizona.

Now, at 30, Brown has taken over as the executive director of Giffords, the gun-safety group founded by the former congresswoman. As she looks ahead to the crucial US elections this November, Brown hopes she can help mobilize the millions of Americans who, like her, have never known a time when mass shootings were not a common occurrence.