PHILADELPHIA – When Christine Leinonen took the stage Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, delegates and guests started to shush one another so they could hear her words. Leinonen's speech about her son, Orlando shooting victim Christopher "Drew" Leinonen, stunned the crowd, and ended in a standing ovation.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Leinonen put out a heartbreaking plea to help people find her son, whose body had not yet been identified. "This is a club that nobody wants to be in," she told TV reporters. "And please can we do something with the assault weapons so that we could stop this club from ever getting any new members? I beg all of you, please."

"This is a club that nobody wants to be in."

At the DNC, she stood beside two of her son's friends, Brandon Wolf and Jose Arraigada, who survived the massacre at Pulse nightclub. They held her up as she told stories about her son, his legacy, and why she's fighting for him now.

"Christopher was my only child. As I used to tell him, you can't do better than perfect," she said. "Christopher's paternal grandparents met and fell in love in a Japanese internment camp, so it was in his DNA that love always trumps hate." The crowd then erupted in a "love trumps hate" chant.

Leinonen explained that her son was a big Hillary Clinton supporter, which is why she decided to speak out. She explained that when he was born, she was a state trooper, and hospital officials put her off-duty gun in a safe while she gave birth. "I didn't argue. I know common sense gun policies save lives," she said. "Where was that common sense the day he died?"

Christopher and his boyfriend, fellow victim Juan Ramon Guerrero, had been dating for two years and talked about getting married. Instead, they had a joint funeral after the deadliest mass shooting in American history.