December 15, 2013 08:13 AM UTC

Photos: Colorado Newtown Shooting Remembrance Event

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post's Austin Briggs reports:

Twenty-six times the sharp ringing of a bell cut through the crisp, cold air Saturday morning at the Cheesman Park Pavilion in honor of those killed one year ago in a shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The group, forgoing the usual moment of silence used to honor victims of violence, opted to ring bells, sing and pray.

"We're not going to be silent; we'll never be silent on this issue again," said Jennifer Hope, Colorado chapter leader for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the group that organized the vigil.

Here's a little more of Jennifer Hope's speech yesterday:

A year ago, mothers across America got a shattering wake-up call. As we watched the tragedy unfold in Newtown, Connecticut, we imagined our own children in those classrooms, and our hearts broke. While we knew we could never truly imagine what these families were going through, we knew we had to do something. As we sat in our kitchens, at our jobs, in our cars, out with our children, each of us realized we could be silent no more.

Our hearts broke, but our eyes opened. We awoke to a national nightmare: A country where every day nearly eight children and teens are shot and killed. A country with the highest rate of gun violence of any developed country in the world. A country with a population so numb to the steady drumbeat of gun violence that many mass shootings aren’t even mentioned in the national news.

Over the past year, our devastation turned into conviction.

More photos from yesterday's event in Cheesman Park after the jump. 

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