Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly sat down with Diane Sawyer last night to talk about their new gun control group and their emotional visit to Newtown in the wake of the school shooting there. Highlights from ABC News:
- Giffords and Kelly, both now retired, initially imagined a life out of the spotlight, but after the Sandy Hook shooting, Giffords says, she thought: "Enough." That was what convinced them it was time to take action.
- Giffords' message for Newtown was "strength," she says. "Gabby often told them, 'You got to have strength. You got to fight for something,'" Kelly adds.
- "Yes, a Glock," Giffords says when asked if she still owns a gun. "Gabby and I are both gun owners," says Kelly. "We are strong supporters of the Second Amendment. Why can't we just make it more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to get guns?" They also oppose extended magazines: "An extended magazine is used to kill people," he says. "Lots of people."
- As for the argument that more people with guns could actually stop gun violence, Kelly says there was "a good guy with a gun" nearby when Giffords got shot, and he almost shot the wrong person.
- "After the shooting in Tucson, there was talk about addressing some of these issues, [and] again after [the movie theater massacre in] Aurora," Kelly says. "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."
- The couple also talks about Giffords' progress since her injury. She calls it a "struggle," but says she is still improving. "You're walking faster, and if I tug you along, you can go even faster," Kelly says. And she plans to walk through the Capitol talking about gun control.
Meanwhile, yesterday in Tucson, the second anniversary of the shooting that wounded Giffords and killed six others was marked by competing events in a police station parking lot, the
AP reports. A councilman on one side of the lot gave out $50 gift cards to people who turned firearms in to police; a state senator on the other side organized an unregulated marketplace where guns were legally exchanged with no paperwork required. And Roxanna Green, mother of the youngest victim Christina-Taylor Green, released
an ad calling for gun control. (More
Gabrielle Giffords stories.)
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