Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a victim of gun violence, has stepped up calls for Congress to take “immediate action” on gun control. This comes in the wake of this past weekend’s mass shootings targeting women and leaving six University of California, Santa Barbara students dead.
According to Politico, this week, Giffords wrote an email to members of Americans for Responsible Solutions, the political actioncommittee she and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, co-founded. She wrote, “Congressmust stop hiding behind the excuse of politics and take upthis issue to ensure the dangerously mentally ill don’t have easy accessto guns and to protect women from gun death and intimidation.”
Giffords has championed a bipartisan bill and efforts to thwart gun violence by pushing for the implementation of greater gun control. These efforts follow an assassination attempt against her in 2011, which nearly left her dead. A man who was later identified as mentally ill shot her in the head outside a supermarket where she was holding a meeting with constituents.
At the beginning of this month, Giffords told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill that “women’s lives are at stake” in the gun debate. In her email to PAC members, she expressed thankfulness that “taking action on mental health and protecting women from gun violence are issues that Democrats and Republicans can agree on–despite the filibuster of expanded background checks last year.”
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