Jonestown survivor Jackie Speier details shooting trauma: ‘Stop shielding your eyes’

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) relayed her own experience as a victim of gun violence in a speech Wednesday in support of a bill that would raise the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21. 

The House passed the Protecting Our Kids Act Wednesday largely along party lines in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas. Both shootings both were carried out by 18-year-old gunmen. 

Speier is a survivor of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, in which cult leader Jim Jones oversaw a mass murder-suicide of more than 900 of his followers in Guyana. After the United State became aware of reports of human rights abuses happening at the Jonestown settlement, then-Rep. Leo Ryan (D) of California led a delegation — including Speier, who was serving as his aide — to investigate. 

Cult members shot and killed Ryan and four others. Speier was shot multiple times and seriously wounded.

“My body is riddled with bullets,” Speier said Wednesday. “I have a divot in my leg that’s the size of a football. I have skin grafts on all parts of my body. I live with that every single day.” 

Pressing Republicans to support the bill, Speier noted that federal law currently prohibits licensed dealers from selling handguns to individuals under 21. 

On Twitter, Speier described her own injuries and said that a student in Uvalde was decapitated during the shooting. 

“Stop shielding your eyes & ears, don’t rationalize the carnage of an AR-15,” she tweeted. 

“If we had a 737 that crashed every month for 12 months, in this country, we would do something about it,” she said on the House floor. 

During the House’s Wednesday hearing on gun violence, Speier pressed Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to describe the conditions of the victims in the shooting in detail, saying she wanted other members of Congress to hear. 

“I’m a victim of gun violence. I know what it does to a body, and I cannot believe that my colleagues don’t recognize that prohibiting the sale of an assault weapon until the age of 21 isn’t going to save lives,” Speier said.