Appearing alongside husband Mark Kelly, Gabrielle Giffords was a guest today on Good Morning America, touching on a subject she sadly knows all too well:
Gun violence.
The ex-Congresswoman - who survived a shooting in Arizona two years ago - visited Newtown, Connecticut last week and had one word for Diane Sawyer when the topic turned to these bloody massacres:
Enough.
"After the shooting in Tucson, there was talk about addressing some of these issues, [and] again after Aurora," Kelly said. "I'm hopeful that this time is different, and I think it is. Twenty first-graders' being murdered in their classrooms is a very personal thing for everybody."
To that end, Giffords and Kelly have started Americans for Responsible Solutions.
It's an initiative described on its official site as being meant to "encourage elected officials to stand up for solutions to prevent gun violence and protect responsible gun ownership by communicating directly with the constituents that elect them."
On their visit to Newtown, Giffords and Kelly met with relatives directly connected to the tragedy.
"[The] first couple that we spoke to, the dad took out his cell phone and showed us a picture of his daughter and I just about lost it, just by looking at the picture," Kelly said. "It was just very tough and it brought back a lot of memories about what that was like for us some two years ago."
Giffords and Kelly both own guns and support the Second Amendment, but they denounce the NRA's hopes to arm schools with security guards and are instead pushing for "common sense" legal changes.
For starters, how about comprehensive background checks all around?
"Why can't we... make it more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to get guns?" asks Kelly, adding that "extended magazines" should be outlawed because they are "only used to kill lots of people."
Giffords still struggles everyday with regular tasks and could only offer a word here and there during the interview, but each spoke volumes: Enough. Strength. Sad.
What do you think? Does the country need major gun reform?
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