♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, the emotional pleas, gut-wrenching testimony on capitol hill from those who have lived the nightmare. >> somewhere out there, there's a mom listening to our testimony. not knowing that our reality will one day be hers. unless we act now. >> and the frustration. >> i continuously hear after every mass shooting that this is not who we are as americans. this is exactly who we are. >> will this be the time that congress finally acts? plus, superstar steph curry and one of his oldest friends. >> nah, he couldn't beat me. he couldn't beat me. >> that's the first lie he ever told you, probably. >> beyond the trash talk, making

a difference off the court. > it's a lesson in faith and patience, perseverance, then taking a tragedy and turning it into something that impacts so many different lives. and john cena's surprise. >> very nice to meet you. >> how the wrestler and actor brought joy to a young ukrainian refugee. three sisters. the drummer, the dribbler, and the day-dreamer... the dribbler's getting hands-on practice with her chase first banking debit card...

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tonight, lawmakers still negotiate oing tonight, lawmakers still negotiate o on capitol hill after a painful and emotional day of congressional testimony. an 11-year-old uvalde survivor and victims' families told their stories in an effort to push congress to do something. here's abc's congressional correspondent rachel scott. >> somewhere on it there, theout there there's a mom listening to our testimony thinking, i can't imagine their pain. not knowing our reality will one day be hers. unless we act now. >> my son has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back, another on his lausetd le by an exploding bullet from an ar-15. i want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children. >> reporter: echoing through the halls of congress today, pain and anger that only families

like these fully know. >> i wish something will change. not only for our kids, but every single kid in the world. because schools are not safe anymore. >> reporter: the frustrations of these parents and survivors on full display today during an unprecedented and emotional hearing just two weeks after the mass shootings in uvalde, texas, which happened ten days after the mass shooting in buffalo, new york. 31 people killed by ar-15s. the youngest 9, the oldest 86. zenetta everhart is left to tend to his son's wounds after the 21-year-old with autism was caught in the crossfire at tops grocery store. >> you are elected and have been chosen and trusted to protect us. let me say here today, i do not feel protected. >> we don't want you to think of lexi as just a number. >> reporter: kimberly and felix rubio lost their 10-year-old daughter, lexi, nearly an hour after attending her honors award

ceremony at robb elementary. >> she was firm, direct, voice raised. today we stand for lexi. as her voice, we demand action. we seek a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. we seek to raise the age to purchase these weapons from 18 to 21 years of age. we seek red flag laws, stronger background checks. >> reporter: in a prerecorded video, lexi's schoolmate, 11-year-old mia, recalled the horrific measures she took to survive. >> he shot my friend. and i thought he would come back to the room. so i grabbed the blood and put it all over me. >> reporter: her father, miguel cerillo, speaking briefly afterwards, pleading for change. >> today i come because i could have lost my baby girl. but she is not the same little girl i used to play with and run

with. something needs to really change. >> reporter: dr. roy guerrero, the only pediatrician in uvalde, who treated wounded children following the shooting, including mia, echoing the same message. >> they showed up because i am a doctor, because how many years ago i swore an oath, an oath to do no harm. after witnessing firsthand the carnage in my hometown of uvalde, to stay silent would have betrayed that oath. inaction is harm. passivity is harm. delay is harm. >> reporter: my colleague mireya villarreal spoke to him before he left for capitol hill. >> i believe in everyone's right to bear arms but my question is does anyone have a right to bear this type of arm? >> reporter: republicans brought their own witness, lucretia hughes, whose 19-year-old son was killed playing dominos. >> a convicted felon killed my son with an illegally obtained

gun. 10 more laws, 20 more laws, a thousand more, won't make what is already illegal more wrong. gun owners are not the enemies, and these gun control policies are not the solution. >> reporter: after the families' testimony ended, republicans accused democrats of politicizing gun violence. >> they took a person, a young person, little mia, who is traumatized two weeks ago, still suffering under obvious ptsd as she testified in that video. you just prolonged the agony of that little child. >> reporter: dr. guerrero, who actually filmed mia's testimony, told abc news monday that the fourth grader wanted to testify. >> i started a whole conversation with, are you sure you want to do this? i don't want to make you do anything you want to do. she said, no, i think people need to know what happened to us

that day. >> reporter: for weeks, politicians have been pressed for answers. >> is raising the age limit a red line for you? >> there's no red lines. we've got to start bringing gun sense into america. >> i've heard many people calling in say, leave our gun rights in place. by the same token, i've heard a lot of calls also from people who are saying, try to find something you can do to work on this. >> reporter: democrats say every single country has mental health issues, but america is the only country where this keeps happening over and over and over again. is it time to consider more comprehensive gun control legislation, then? >> i think we ought to have comprehensive legislation that solves the problems. >> reporter: tonight the house passing the "protect our kids act" that would raise the age for purchasing semiautomatic rifles to 21, require a background check for buying untraceable firearms, strengthen safe storage requirements. but the bill is not expected to pass the senate.

>> it seems uvalde just following buffalo has made the congress itself, our broken congress, pause for a moment and look for that rarest thing in american life, common ground. whether they'll get there, who knows. but what we saw today i think was a congress trying to take its job seriously. >> reporter: robb elementary school teacher and survivor ono ferel. ez has little faith in the safety measures that already exist. >> training no training, all kinds of training, nothing gets you ready for this. the laws have to change. >> reporter: reyes explaining in excruciating detail how the 18-year-old killer behaved during the nearly hour and a half he was inside the school. >> he also lingered around in the area and sat on my desk.

and piddle-paddled with his foot. splashing the blood in my face. putting my phone on my back when it was ringing and people were texting me. >> you're shot, you're bleeding, you have children who have been shot -- >> he did shoot again. he shot again. and that's when -- the second time he got me in the back. i guess just to make sure that i was dead. and i just kept praying and hoping that he would leave my clasoo students in his classroom were killed. to date there have been more than 250 mass shootings in this country this year. the last year ended with 692. >> mass shootings do happen in other countries. not as frequently as in the united states. and those countries act. when there was that terrible mass shooting in new zealand, that country acted very quickly to ban the kinds of weapon that was used. these countries can move swiftly in a way that the united states

can't. because we have that constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms. >> reporter: in uvalde, what this tight-knit community bears the most is their grief. today, 10-year-old annabelle rodriguez, laid to rest. the 16th funeral for the victims of the shooting. mourners and people who come to pay their respects expressing their own frustrations. >> people have commented that there's always been mass shootings, and you know, nothing has ever been done, why should this be different? well, it should be different. >> i'm just hoping that something gets done. it is just -- it's the scariest thing at the moment. >> stop the gun violence. because there's a lot going on about that. and you know, we should just save children's lives. >> reporter: it's the same mission buffalo mother zanetta everhart is on. determined to make sure those in power in our nation's capital

will never forget. >> democrats and republicans go to school, go to church, and they go grocery shopping. right? this is not about your personal feelings and your personal politics. this is about protecting the humans in this country. >> our thanks to rachel. up next, as golden state's steph curry vies for basketball history, he's not forgetting an old friend who's working to save lives. d here, it needed to be here. ruby's a1c is down with rybelsus®. my a1c wasn't at goal, now i'm down with rybelsus®. mom's a1c is down with rybelsus®. (♪ ♪) in a clinical study, once-daily rybelsus® significantly lowered a1c better than a leading branded pill. rybelsus® isn't for people with type 1 diabetes. don't take rybelsus® if you or your family ever had medullary thyroid cancer, or have multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2,

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after losing a tough one to the celtics. curry's shooting is already the stuff of legend, having honed his skills since his early childhood in north carolina. lisa salters and over friends at "espn e-60" take us back to the early days of basketball when curry met one of his oldest friends whose work today is saving lives. >> reporter: you've probably never heard of 34-year-old omar carter. but once you've heard his story and about his lifelong connection with steph curry, it will be hard to forget him. >> this is home. this is where it all started. this is where i met steph and the whole family, and the rest is history. >> playing basketball growing up, we connected really quick. i knew he was a talented basketball player. he kind of had gravity around him. anybody that talked to him felt comfortable, felt at home. >> we'd eat together, sleep together, play together. it was basketball 24/7. for me it was more of a brotherhood. >> reporter: soon omar was

spending time not just with steph but the whole curry family. >> to play sports, we had to get the schoolwork done. you had to stay out of trouble, obviously. a lot of the kids growing up with my kids saw that, so they gravitated toward that. >> reporter: in 2006, when omar was 16, his parents decided to divorce. >> i wanted to be out of the situation. i texted steph, "i'm on my way." and i left. >> i knew we'd take care of each other. that was the biggest thing. i think we appreciated that love and that connection. >> it was open-door policy, as long as you knew the rules once you came to the house. this is a place they can come, talk, hang out, get things under control. >> i just told him, i don't want to go home. and he said, you can stay. so that was my junior, senior year. i was away from all my problems. it was almost like me being on the basketball court.

>> reporter: omar also joined steph at charlotte christian academy. >> i wanted him on my team, not just because i knew him as a person, but we could push each other to new heights. he could physically dominate you or he could outskill you. >> these trick shots that he's shooting now, been doing it. so we had a lot of success that season. it was pretty cool. >> yeah, he going to kill me for saying this, but nah, he couldn't beat me. he couldn't beat me. >> that's the first lie he ever told you, probably. >> yeah. >> so i do -- that was the thing when we were playing in high school, we were always working out together, we could push each other. because we wanted to be great. many a night we talked about everything, but definitely about what we wanted to accomplish. >> we wanted to go to the nba. for sure. but i just wanted to play

basketball. i think that was his mindset too. >> reporter: omar went to charleston southern. and then to appalachian state. steph played at davidson where he grabbed everyone's attention during the 2008 ncaa tournament. >> curry driving on wallace. a high three. got it! >> the 2009 nba draft, the golden state warriors select -- stephen curry. >> okay, cool, this is motivation. this is what we talked about. okay, it's my turn. >> reporter: but omar was not drafted. he played in brazil and then the dominican republic, trying to catch the attention of nba scouts. >> that will to kind of get to that next level was always there. always just knew he could accomplish whatever he wanted to, no matter where it took him in the world, he'd be ready for it. >> reporter: then came the summer of 2013. it was the offseason.

and omar was training and playing in proam games in this small charlotte gym. >> i hear the game, i get the chills. but it was taken away from me, though. >> omar makes a since bounce pass to dorenzo, who lays the ball up. omar starts to backpedal. >> i remember he just sort of stumbled back. i actually thought he tripped. >> at that moment it was like almost a dead silence. like an eerie silence. i'm a cardiac icu nurse. when i checked his pulse, it was thready at first. and then i lost it and started cpr. >> i kneeled down to check for air. he said, aah! his body jumped. and i saw his stomach, you know -- i said, all right, he's breathing. >> reporter: doctors told omar they had diagnosed him with hypertropic cardiomyopathy, a disease in which the heart

muscle becomes abnormally thick, making it harder to pump blood. given the seriousness of his case, surgeons put an icd, implantable cardioverter defibrillator in his chest. the device would detect and correct any irregular heartbeats. >> i told him, i said, omar, i don't know that i can clear you to play basketball. >> i'm crying. what are we talking about here? you fought all your life for this, that's all you you know. >> reporter: slowly, omar realized that part of recovery was acceptance. and finding a new purpose. >> cardiac arrest, my heart stopped for 13 minutes -- >> reporter: in 2014, omar partnered with his heart surgeon and created "the omar carter foundation" to raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest and to teach life-saving skills. >> i may take care of one patient or two patients in a

day. thus far in the foundation, omar has taken care of 10,000, 15,000. people are learning through the story that omar has provided. >> reporter: now you know the story of omar and steph. two friends with an undeniable bond. >> don't believe anything he says, by the way. don't believe anything he says. >> you know what i say. the only thing i say was, back in high school, you couldn't that was the real thing. >> reporter: it started as a shared basketball dream. but has grown into something much bigger. >> we went our separate ways as far as basketball is concerned. but the goal has always been the same. i always talk about basketball, but it's impacting lives. >> hopefully i inspire a lot of people in the right direction. but o's impact is as important

as anything. it's a lesson in faith, in patience, perseverance, taking a tragedy and turning it into something that impacts so many different lives. >> our thanks to lisa. for the full version of the story and more, subscribe to the espn youtube channel. up next, a team's journey out of ukraine. you won't believe how actor and wrestler john cena inspired him. are you tired of washing dishes? well flip the way you clean'em. introducing dawn platinum ez-squeeze. it's a new, upside-down bottle... with no cap. you just grab and squeeze. platinum's upgraded, more powerful formula breaks down and removes grease 4 times faster. nice! no flip, no mess. platinum is also a go-to grease cleaner for your sink, your countertops, and to pre-treat stains on laundry. faster. easier. new dawn platinum ez-squeeze. flip the way you clean dishes. from the very first touch.

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♪ finally tonight, when mischa and his mother fled the war in ukraine, she made him a promise

to help encourage him to keepo . when cena himself heard mischa's story, he flew to a town amsterdam to meet one of his biggest fans. they spent the day together, comparing their muscles, eating cake. cena said mischa and his mom are great examples of how persistence can lead to joy. and a programming note, tomorrow night abc news will have live coverage of the january 6th committee's first primetime hearing. that's at 8:00 eastern, 5:00 pacific. that's "nightline."