Drew Spiegel was preparing to march in the 2022 Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. gunshots were heard.

Speaking to ABC News, the 19-year-old said, “Seven people died and 48 more were injured in this short period of time.” “I texted my parents saying I couldn’t come home after the July 4th parade. And my life changed forever.”

For more than a year after the shooting, Spiegel did not speak about it. That changed when he went to college and encountered the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

“He asked me directly, ‘Are you a survivor of gun violence?’ they asked. “And I said no, but technically I was in a mass shooting. That’s what they said, so yes.”

There are 43,000 fatal shootings each year in the United States, and 120 people are fatally shot every day, according to Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, a subsidiary of Everytown.

“This is a bigger problem than the problem of mass shootings, it’s the epidemic of gun violence,” Spiegel said. July assassination attempt And apparent September initiative About former President Donald Trump Won second term in the White House on Tuesday, as evidence of the scale of the problem.

“If former President Donald Trump is not safe from gun violence, then no one is safe,” he said.

Now Spiegel is sharing his story with people who have different views than his own.

“The amendment that we’re fighting for is not mutually exclusive with the Second Amendment. They can coexist,” he told ABC News. “We can have a country where people are allowed to carry guns and also a country where you don’t have to worry about going to school.”

But he’s not just thinking about the next four years; It also looks at how laws in the coming decades could save lives.

He found an ally in Representative Maxwell Frost. won the election He won Florida’s 10th Congressional District in 2022 and Re-election on Tuesday. The 27-year-old Democrat is also a survivor of gun violence and was previously the national organizing director of a gun control advocacy group. March for Our Lives.

The move did not result in the passage of gun control legislation, but Frost acknowledges that change takes time.

“The way to measure the success of a movement is to see the seeds planted in people,” Frost told ABC News. “I’m the first person from this movement to join Congress. That’s a win, right? Office to Prevent Gun Violence (in 2023). It’s a win.”

But Frost warned ABC News in August that he predicted that progress would be rolled back.

“If Donald Trump wins this election, one of the things he’ll do on Day One is get rid of the office completely. Get rid of it,” he said. “This office helps save lives across the country. So getting rid of the office means more people will die from gun violence.”

It’s unclear how much progress gun control will make once Trump returns to the White House in January. Trump administration in 2018 banned stocksWhich allows the guns to operate essentially as automatic weapons. However, the Supreme Court he lifted the ban In June.

“When I get back to the Oval Office, no one will touch your firearms,” ​​he said. He told members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) In February.

Even so, Spiegel hopes people will continue to fight for gun violence prevention laws to prevent stories like his from happening again.

“I think our rights and freedoms will be under greater attack than ever before. But I don’t think this is completely over,” he told ABC News. “I think we still have a country worth fighting for, and more importantly, friends and family in this country. So we keep our heads down and get back to work. You just keep fighting.”