This
op-ed appears in the opinion
pages of the New York Times dated 18 April 2013.
Gabrielle
Giffords was a former Democratic representative from Arizona from 2007 to 2012.
On 8 January 2011
during a meet and greet at a Tucson, AZ supermarket a gunman opened fired
killing 6 and wounding 14 including the Congresswoman who took a gunshot to the
head.
Among
the dead was Chief Judge of the US District Court of Arizona John Roll; Gabriel
Zimmerman who was the community outreach director for the Congresswoman; and Christina
Taylor Green, a 9 year old girl who was brought to meet her Representative in
the US House.
For
his crime, the gunman was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms plus 140
years in prison without parole in November 2012.
The
assassination attempt left the Congresswoman gravely wounded and having to
relearn basic motor skills.
Along
with her husband, former astronaut and retired Navy Captain Mark Kelly, she is
the founder of Americans
for Responsible Solutions which focuses on sensible gun control legislation
while upholding the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
On
Wednesday the United States Senate voted
54-46 to expand background checks to gun shows and Internet sales. The vote
needed 60 to invoke cloture.
This
was her response to the Senate's inaction.
SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and
the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the
first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a
hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must
feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and
bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last
thing the students heard if the gunman found them.
On Wednesday, a minority of senators
gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it
harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of
deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in
Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to
count.
Some of the senators who voted against
the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children
were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have
also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head
at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy
for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have
heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding
background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on
them.
I watch TV and read the papers like
everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough
vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern
Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a
complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was
neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold
calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle
Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on
contributions, lobbying and outside spending.
Speaking is physically difficult for
me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have
righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws
so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children
safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby
so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go
on.
I am asking every reasonable American
to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am
asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them:
You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’
e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their
offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.
People have told me that I’m
courageous, but I have seen greater courage. Gabe Zimmerman, my friend and
staff member in whose honor we dedicated a room in the United States Capitol
this week, saw me shot in the head and saw the shooter turn his gunfire on
others. Gabe ran toward me as I lay bleeding. Toward gunfire. And then the
gunman shot him, and then Gabe died. His body lay on the pavement in front of
the Safeway for hours.
I have thought a lot about why Gabe ran
toward me when he could have run away. Service was part of his life, but it was
also his job. The senators who voted against background checks for online and
gun-show sales, and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun
buyers with mental illness, failed to do their job.
They looked at these most benign and
practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they
looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought
shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.
They will try to hide their decision
behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have
done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you —
but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say
misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have
heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of
the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged
for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that
others might be spared their agony.
This defeat is only the latest chapter
of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul. Our democracy’s history
is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in
the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of
senators voted to join that list.
Mark my words: if we cannot make our
communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means
available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’
interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is
not the American way.
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