POLITICO: Mark Kelly: Gabrielle Giffords and I will do ‘whatever it takes’ for gun control

January 24, 2013

The gun control crowd is about to have a powerful and compelling new lobbyist on Capitol Hill: Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). Giffords, who was nearly killed in a shooting rampage in Tucson two years ago, resigned her seat in the House a year ago Friday. She hasn’t decided whether she’ll actually register as a lobbyist yet — a move she can make now that the one-year “cooling off” period is expiring — but she will represent her new outfit, Americans for Responsible Solutions, in pushing Congress to enact new gun-control laws. “We need to get Congress to act on this issue,” Giffords’ husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, told POLITICO in an interview on Thursday evening. Kelly and Giffords partnered up to form Americans for Responsible Solutions, which has a a super PAC arm and a lobbying arm. The aim of the sister organizations is to lobby members of Congress to vote for gun control — and then reward friends and punish enemies on the campaign trail. Whether Giffords and Kelly will appear in districts, or in campaign ads, remains to be seen, as they’re still trying to figure out the intricacies of campaign and lobbying laws. But if it’s within the law, they’ll do it, they say.

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