Gabby Speaks

As you probably know, Gabby Giffords is the former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who was seriously injured in an assassination attempt in 2011. In 2013, she and her husband Mark Kelly started a political action committee called Americans for Responsible Solutions devoted to promoting gun control legislation. I donate a little money to their PAC and receive email updates from them. The mailing yesterday was mainly a plea for money, but with it Giffords included an op-ed she had written that was published in the New York Time on April 17, 2013. In that article she expressed her disgust at the Senators who blocked “common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms.” In yesterday's email, she said her 2013 article “is as relevant now as it was on that day.” She writes,

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents -- who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

Giffords is not radical. I think she is a gun owner herself. So when legislators listen to her tell her story and then vote no, I think she is right when she says that senators “fear the NRA and the gun lobby.” There is something wrong when a few gun deaths by terrorists is a huge issue and the rest of the thousands of gun deaths are not. Time to send a little money and take some of the actions recommended at their site.