PHOENIX

Gabrielle Giffords to Arizona lawmakers: 'Stopping gun violence takes courage, the courage to do what’s right'

Dianna M. Náñez
The Republic | azcentral.com
Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords prepares to announce the Arizona Coalition for Common Sense at the Heard Museum in Phoenix on March 16, 2017.

It was as if she was still an Arizona congresswoman meeting and greeting constituents, handling the push and pull of politics.

She waved as the Phoenix audience clapped when she entered the room. She listened and held the hand of Jennifer Longdon, an Arizona gunshot survivor who spoke about the bullet that hit her spine and the one that pierced her fiance’s brain. And she shook hands with a boy whose mother stood nearby smiling at the pair.

Then, it was time for her to speak, something that used to come easy for the seasoned lawmaker.

After she recovered from being shot in the head during a 2011 meeting with constituents near Tucson, Gabrielle Giffords, along with her husband, Navy veteran and retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, spent years working to change gun laws.

Thursday, when she appeared at the Heard Museum, she made clear she remains unafraid of the political push and pull.

Giffords told the audience she is ready to start fighting any Arizona politician who stands in the way of gun-violence prevention.

“Stopping gun violence takes courage, the courage to do what’s right, the courage of new ideas,” she said. “I’ve seen great courage when my life was on the line. Now is the time to come together to be responsible. Democrats, Republicans, everyone, we must never stop fighting.”

She kept her comments brief, but not timid.

“Fight, fight, fight,” she said. “Be bold, be courageous, the nation’s counting on you.”

Giffords and Kelly announced the launch of a group called the Arizona Coalition for Common Sense to reduce gun violence. The press conference, followed by a roundtable discussion, included gun owners, business and faith leaders and survivors of shootings and urged strategies for changing Arizona gun laws.

Giffords made headlines last month when she called on members of Congress feeling pressured by constituents, angry over President Donald Trump’s policies, not to abandon their town-hall meetings.

PREVIOUSLY: Giffords to lawmakers avoiding town halls: 'Have some courage'

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, noted the gunman who attacked Giffords and killed six other people during the mass shooting as reason not to hold public meetings where he could face activists, protesters and others.

"I was shot on a Saturday morning," Giffords said in a written statement released by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun-control organization she and Kelly founded. "By Monday morning my offices were open to the public. Ron Barber — at my side that Saturday, who was shot multiple times, then elected to Congress in my stead — held town halls. It's what the people deserve in a representative."

PREVIOUSLY: At tense town hall, Rep. Martha McSally faces calls of 'Do your job!'

Though the couple's advocacy work consistently draws media attention, they have been largely unsuccessful at changing federal gun laws. Kelly told the audience Thursday that they expect this fight to be harder under a gun-friendly Trump administration. He vowed to take their fight across the country.

“If Congress refuses to act, then, our leaders in our states need to act and that’s what this new coalition for common sense is all about,” he said.

Kelly said the couple’s Arizona friends have long asked why they have waited to take their fight to Arizona. He acknowledged that changes to gun laws in a country, and states like Arizona, with a strong gun lobby is a difficult task.

He said the couple needed experience, and a win. They needed to learn how to pass legislation, he said, in states, unlike Arizona, where the political scene is more open to limiting access to guns.

Kelly said that among the changes the coalition will seek is closing loopholes in Arizona laws that allow state felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill to have the option of buying a gun without a background check.

“Consider this: In the states and the District of Columbia that already require background checks ... specifically for handgun sales, 46 percent fewer women are shot to death by their partners, there are 48 percent fewer firearm suicides, and 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers are shot to death by handguns,” he said, later telling the group that he has two brothers who are police officers.

Kelly said that the coalition’s strategy would involve meeting with state politicians and Arizona voters. He called Gov. Doug Ducey a thoughtful man and said he looks forward to meeting with the governor to discuss state gun laws. Officials with the coalition could not confirm whether Kelly or anyone from the group had reached out to Ducey yet.

Giffords was among 13 people wounded when a gunman opened fire at a public event she was holding in front of a Tucson-area grocery store in 2011. Six people were killed, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green.

SPECIAL REPORT: Gabrielle Giffords shooting: A fatal chain of events

Kelly said he and Giffords founded their national organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions, later — after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He said an additional 30,000 people have been killed with guns since that shooting in 2012.

At the roundtable, leaders from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, veterans and other community leaders started the conversation about first steps.

Pat Maisch, who was at the shooting in Tucson, said she has met many Arizonans who will never forget the lives lost that day. She said she tries to explain the loss to open people's minds to change.

“I often say that the worst thing my mind would let me imagine for two years was John and Roxanna Green holding the body of their daughter,” she said.

Then she watched with a grieving nation the parents of children shot in Sandy Hook.

“They were told there’s not enough of your child’s body left for you to see it, don’t have that in your mind,” she said.

She said there comes a point where the fight needs to be at the ballot box.

“I can’t imagine that we can’t change some of their hearts and if we can’t, we need to change their titles — make them former senators and former representatives.”

But Arizona's state house has long been controlled by Republican leaders, and few political strategists see that changing anytime soon.

Garrick Taylor, a senior vice president with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, joined others at the roundtable who believe the political climate in Arizona and across the nation has changed so that there is little room for compromise. He said the chamber had no official stance on gun legislation but that they advocate for a more hospitable Arizona.

Gerry Hills, founder of Arizonans for Gun Safety, said that she helped pass Shannon’s Law, legislation named after 14-year-old Shannon Smith. In the summer of 1999, the girl was shot in the head while in the backyard of her Phoenix home, killed by a stray bullet that police believe was fired into the air. No one was ever arrested.

Smith’s parents worked with gun-safety advocates to make it a felony, with limited exceptions, to negligently fire a weapon inside city limits.

Hills said she was stunned when she recently heard that some Arizona legislators want to work to ease the punishments for breaking Shannon’s Law.

Hills and others at the discussion agreed that off the record, Arizona’s GOP lawmakers are open to common-sense action on gun laws. But no one will back such changes publicly, Hills said, because they fear a backlash at the polls.

Kelly said that, if necessary, the coalition would use ballot measures to allow Arizona voters to decide what they want. He said that they have been successful in other states where they have used such strategies.

Giffords and Kelly said their goodbyes. They said they knew there would be a tough fight ahead.

“We sent a man to the moon,” Kelly said. “We can do this.”

Giffords just smiled and said, “I’m hopeful.”