Gabby Giffords speaks against gun violence at Kingswood Oxford
Gabby Giffords speaks against gun violence at Kingswood Oxford
Hartford Courant
By Christopher Keating
October 16, 2014- Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in West Hartford Thursday on a national tour with nine stops in nine days, urged women to keep pushing for stronger laws against gun violence and domestic abuse.
Giffords has become a nationally known anti-gun advocate since suffering serious injuries when she was shot in the head in January 2011 by a mentally disturbed gunman in a supermarket parking lot in her home state of Arizona. She was on the third day of her national ”Protect All Women” tour that will bring her to Pennsylvania on Friday and then Seattle and Portland, Ore. next week.
”Dangerous people with guns are a threat to women,” Giffords told a group of about 20 leaders around a large table at the Kingswood Oxford School. ”Criminals with guns. Abusers with guns. Stalkers with guns — makes gun violence a women’s issue.”
In brief remarks, Giffords said: ”For mothers, for families, for me and you, women can lead the way. We stand up for common sense. We stand for responsibility. We can change our laws. We can win elections. Please join your voice with mine. Thank you very much.”’
After a one-hour roundtable discussion with advocates, Giffords made a surprise visit to a group of senior honors students at the private school with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
Giffords told the students that she is still undergoing speech therapy and physical therapy as she recovers from her wounds. She has stepped down from her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and she walked Thursday with a cane, but without other assistance.
”I’m still fighting to make the world a better place, and you can, too,” Giffords told the students. ”Get involved with your community. Set an example. Be passionate. Be courageous. Be your best.”
Giffords, a Democrat, and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, created a Super PAC that has helped gun-control candidates and has spent nearly $50,000 to help Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in his dead-heat re-election battle against Republican business executive Tom Foley. The two candidates are locked in a rematch of their 2010 battle that was the closest gubernatorial election in Connecticut in more than 50 years.
Blumenthal noted that he first met Giffords after the Newtown shootings in December 2012 when Giffords traveled to the home of one of the victim’s families.
”What struck me at that moment was the courage and strength that she gave them in that horrific moment in their lives — just her presence, her words, but also the face and voice that she gave to this struggle,” Blumenthal said.
”We’re here today at a turning point, at a real historic moment,” Blumenthal told the advocates around the table. ”I think we have the opportunity to seize this moment in a way that occurs rarely in our nation’s history. We are, in some ways, at a low point. Congress has failed to act. Congress has been complicit in the tens of thousands of deaths that have occurred since Newtown when the nation, and certainly our state, was transformed by the unspeakable and unimaginable horror of that time.”
Despite extensive lobbying, Congress failed to pass any gun-control laws following the Newtown shootings. Pro-gun groups lobbied against bans on assault weapons and universal background checks.
”Congress’ failure to act really is unforgivable,” Blumenthal said. ”You cannot be against domestic violence and fail to take a stand against gun violence. They are two heads of a single monster.”
Blumenthal, a Democrat, reminded the group that it took 12 years to pass the Brady Bill, which was named after former White House press secretary James Brady. He was paralyzed after being shot, along with President Ronald Reagan, in 1981 outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. by John Hinckley.
The current push for gun control, Blumenthal said, will be a long battle in the same way it was when it was led by Brady.
”We’re not giving up,” Blumenthal said. ”We’re not going away…. The courage and strength that we’ve seen from Gabby Giffords, from the Newtown families, from the survivors and victims of domestic violence, I think, will be an inspiration to us all.”