Tag: gabrielle giffords
Obama Meets With Gabrielle Giffords As Administration Looks To Tighten Gun Laws

Obama Meets With Gabrielle Giffords As Administration Looks To Tighten Gun Laws

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — As the White House seeks ways that President Barack Obama could legally tighten restrictions on gun ownership, including closure of the so-called gun show loophole, he met Friday with Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman severely wounded in a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011 in which six people were killed.

The meeting with Giffords and her husband, NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, who advocate for tougher gun safety laws, was part of the Obama administration’s ongoing dialogue “with those who share the president’s passion for taking some common-sense steps to make it harder for those with bad intentions to get their hands on guns,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

“The administration has worked closely with some of these outside groups to amplify the call of people across the country, so that members of Congress can be responsive to those public priorities,” Earnest added.

Obama renewed his push for tighter gun control after the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon in October that killed nine, as well as the gunman. Earnest said Friday that administration officials “have cast a wide net” in exploring possible actions the president could take in using executive authority to limit access to guns, but he declined to specify what was being considered and how soon Obama might announce any plan.

The leading proposal under consideration, according to White House officials, is a reinterpretation of existing law to require all or most people trying to buy guns to submit to background checks. Licensed firearms dealers must conduct background checks, but those who make “occasional sales” are exempt from the requirement, including sales at gun shows.

Such background checks might not have altered the path taken by the shooters behind Wednesday’s massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. Federal officials have concluded that Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two assailants, legally bought two of the weapons, and two others were likewise legally purchased and given to him by a friend.

The idea for tighter background checks was one of several suggested by gun safety advocates in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., three years ago this month, though it wasn’t part of final recommendations by Vice President Joe Biden, who led the White House effort to restrict access to guns.

“I don’t know if they felt they didn’t want to do it or couldn’t do it for legal reasons,” said Jim Kessler of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, who was in regular consultations with the administration during the deliberations. “It just didn’t happen.”

A bill to strengthen the background check system died in the Senate a few months after the Newtown rampage.

On Friday, Earnest blasted Senate Republicans who voted a day earlier to block several gun-related measures that Democrats had offered as amendments to a health care bill, including the bipartisan background check proposal that also failed to pass in 2013.

With their votes, Republicans “stood up once again with the (National Rifle Association) and in the face of common sense,” Earnest said.

Obama’s meeting with Americans for Responsible Solutions, which was not on his publicly released schedule, came on a day when he otherwise stayed out of the public eye.

The FBI announced Friday that it was investigating the shooting rampage in San Bernardino as an act of terrorism.

In comments to reporters before the FBI announcement, Earnest declined to comment on reports that Tashfeen Malik, who died in a police shootout after she and Farook, her husband, killed 14 at a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Health Department, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on Facebook.

©2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

File photo: Chesterfield County Sheriff’s lieutenant David Lee removes rifles from a shipping container as he and other officers sort through thousands of guns found in the home and garage of Brent Nicholson, in Pageland, South Carolina, November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Miczek

Gun Limits Are A Key Women’s Issue

Gun Limits Are A Key Women’s Issue

By Rekha Basu, Des Moines Register (MCT)

What wasn’t said said everything.

Gabby Giffords came to Des Moines last week to talk with women about gun safety. But after a few opening sentences, the former congresswoman from Arizona didn’t speak again.

And that fact spoke louder than anything anyone could have said about the need to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

It was nearly three years ago that Giffords, now 44, was shot in the head while holding a public meeting with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. At first it was unclear if she would survive — six other people at the scene did not — and then if she’d be able to read or write, walk or talk.

She walks with a cane now. When there is something to applaud, she does it by slapping one hand against a knee; the other is paralyzed. She still has trouble talking thanks to a condition called aphasia, which sometimes makes it hard to understand speech or writing, or to call up the right words. It’s associated with strokes and head injuries.

It happened to “Gabby,” as she is widely known, because a mentally ill man with a history of drug abuse who spouted conspiracy theories and didn’t think women should hold political office could buy a 9-mm pistol from a sportsmen’s store and fire on a crowd.

“Dangerous people with guns are a threat to women,” Giffords said firmly but haltingly. “Criminals with guns, abusers with guns, stalkers with guns. That makes gun violence a women’s issue — for mothers, for families, for me and you.”

Giffords was on a nine-state tour with the organization she cofounded with her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly (both gun owners) called Americans for Responsible Solutions. They did so in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Its fact sheet explains why this is a women’s issue:

Women in America are 11 times more likely to be killed by a gun than women in other advanced industrialized countries.

In the 12 years ending in 2013, more U.S. women were killed by intimate partners using guns — close to 6,500 — than U.S. troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

The risk of death in a domestic dispute increases five-fold when there’s a gun available.

This is the time of year, before elections, when organizations are out lobbying hard for their issues. It might be human-services spending or the federal debt. It may be climate change or agricultural subsidies. But it was clear from this panel of women, in law enforcement, domestic violence prevention, human and civil rights, that this one is already an issue for them.

The immediate priority for Giffords’ organization is fixing weaknesses in federal and state laws. At the federal level, even though people convicted of domestic abuse and felony stalking can’t legally buy guns, those convicted of misdemeanor stalking can. And the domestic abuser prohibition doesn’t apply to dating relationships, though in 2008 almost half of all domestic violence homicides were committed against someone who was or had been a dating partner.

Proposed fixes to the law also would prohibit people under temporary restraining orders from owning firearms, expand federal background checks and improve domestic violence records submissions to the national crime database. Another gun-safety organization, Moms Demand Action, notes that in 29 states, convicted stalkers can buy and own guns.

Giffords sat and listened as women talked about particular acts of gun violence, polls and loopholes. She nodded, leaned forward, occasionally wrinkled her forehead and applauded as the situation demanded. But she didn’t talk.

I returned to the office stirred by her determined demeanor despite the horrible reality of what was done to her, only to get another reality check. It was a news release from the organization Iowa Gun Owners.

“Gun-grabbers will only be more emboldened if they can attack our gun rights in the legislative session and feel no push-back in their districts when election season comes along,” it said. So it was distributing scorecards showing how every state legislator had voted on guns.

“Gun-control zealots in Iowa are learning a painful lesson,” said the news release. “If you come after our gun rights, you will be held accountable.”

Painful? They don’t understand the meaning of that word. They should meet Gabby Giffords.

Rekha Basu is a columnist for the Des Moines Register. Readers may send her email at rbasu@dmreg.com.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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Giffords Backs Washington State Proposal Requiring Checks For All Gun Sales

Giffords Backs Washington State Proposal Requiring Checks For All Gun Sales

By Brian M. Rosenthal, The Seattle Times

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords headlined a crowded and emotional hearing on gun-sale background checks here Tuesday, giving Washington state a preview of a looming debate.

In brief remarks aimed both at lawmakers and the voters who will almost certainly get the final say, Giffords symbolically cast her story of surviving a shooting rampage as an argument for requiring the checks for all gun sales.

“Be bold, be courageous,” she urged. “The nation is counting on you.”

Giffords, a Democrat who was shot in the head during a rampage that killed six and injured a dozen others, subsequently retired from Congress and founded her own national gun-violence-prevention group.

She and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, spoke Tuesday at a state House Judiciary Committee hearing on Initiative 594, which would mandate the universal background checks, and Initiative 591, which would keep the current system requiring the checks only for sales from licensed firearm dealers.

The proposals — initiatives to the legislature — are getting hearings in the House and Senate this week even though they are expected to end up on the November ballot. Lawmakers can pass such initiatives into law but usually punt them to voters.

Representative Laurie Jinkins (D-WA), who chairs the Judiciary panel, said she does not even plan to bring up the measures for committee votes.

“I don’t see the purpose of doing that,” said Jinkins, adding she held the hearing out of respect for the hundreds of thousands of residents who signed petitions to qualify the initiatives for consideration.

Judging by Tuesday’s turnout, residents appreciated the courtesy.

Hundreds poured onto the Capitol campus for the afternoon hearing, filling 46 sign-in sheets for public testimony, according to committee staff. Only a fraction actually got to testify, with the rest relegated to the hallway or the state House chambers, where video of the hearing was projected onto a large screen.

Those who did testify were evenly divided between supporters and opponents of universal background checks.

Giffords and Kelly went first, arguing expanded checks would save lives by helping prevent criminals and dangerously mentally ill residents from getting guns — “all without infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Kelly said.

Kelly, who had previously testified in support of similar laws in Colorado, Nevada and Delaware, played up his Washington state connections: He noted he used to live on Whidbey Island and mentioned Seattle’s May 2012 Cafe Racer shootings before discussing several more recent tragedies.

“Since celebrating the new year, America has seen a school shooting every other day,” Kelly said.

Other victims also pleaded for passage of Initiative 594.

Gun-rights advocates countered the measure would not prevent shootings.

“‘Five ninety four’ is not about universal background checks, because criminals will ignore the law and continue to obtain firearms where most criminals obtain firearms now” — illegal sources,” said Brian Judy, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Instead, Judy referred to the proposal as an “excessive regulatory scheme” to register gun owners that would serve only to burden law-abiding gun owners.

Phil Shave, executive director of the Washington Arms Collectors, which hosts gun shows, said the measure “would affect millions of our citizens and, in my opinion, accomplish nothing.”

But others, like Joe Deaser, said that even saving one life would make Initiative 594 worthwhile.

Deaser, who owns a gun club in California, which has universal background checks, said they are “a very important part of the puzzle” of preventing violence.

The heated debate took place as other activists milled in the hallway.

Supporters of Initiative 594 wore blue and red stickers that said “YES ON 594: Save Lives. Reduce Crime.”

Second Amendment activists, some of whom took advantage of their right in Washington state to carry firearms openly, wore white stickers with a red line through the words “Gun Control.”
Devyn Hembry, a 24-year-old former DJ from Shelton, carried a semi-automatic rifle and distributed photographs of Giffords carrying a rifle, meant to portray the former congresswoman as a hypocrite.

In general, Kelly said in an interview, he and his wife were pleased with the atmosphere.

“It’s great to see that people are enthusiastic about this from both sides of the issue,” he said.

Kelly said he doesn’t know how involved the couple will be in Washington’s initiative fight.

Photo via Wikimedia

Giffords Backs Washington State Proposal Requiring Checks For All Gun Sales

Giffords Backs Washington State Proposal Requiring Checks For All Gun Sales

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords headlined a crowded and emotional hearing on gun-sale background checks here Tuesday, giving Washington state a preview of a looming debate.

In brief remarks aimed both at lawmakers and the voters who will almost certainly get the final say, Giffords symbolically cast her story of surviving a shooting rampage as an argument for requiring the checks for all gun sales.

“Be bold, be courageous,” she urged. “The nation is counting on you.”

Giffords, a Democrat who was shot in the head during a rampage that killed six and injured a dozen others, subsequently retired from Congress and founded her own national gun-violence-prevention group.

She and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, spoke Tuesday at a state House Judiciary Committee hearing on Initiative 594, which would mandate the universal background checks, and Initiative 591, which would keep the current system requiring the checks only for sales from licensed firearm dealers.

The proposals — initiatives to the Legislature — are getting hearings in the House and Senate this week even though they are expected to end up on the November ballot. Lawmakers can pass such initiatives into law but usually punt them to voters.

State Rep. Laurie Jinkins, who chairs the Judiciary panel, said she does not even plan to bring up the measures for committee votes.

“I don’t see the purpose of doing that,” said Jinkins, D-Tacoma, adding she held the hearing out of respect for the hundreds of thousands of residents who signed petitions to qualify the initiatives for consideration.

Judging by Tuesday’s turnout, residents appreciated the courtesy.

Hundreds poured onto the Capitol campus for the afternoon hearing, filling 46 sign-in sheets for public testimony, according to committee staff. Only a fraction actually got to testify, with the rest relegated to the hallway or the state House chambers, where video of the hearing was projected onto a large screen.

Those who did testify were evenly divided between supporters and opponents of universal background checks.

Giffords and Kelly went first, arguing expanded checks would save lives by helping prevent criminals and dangerously mentally ill residents from getting guns — “all without infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Kelly said.

Kelly, who had previously testified in support of similar laws in Colorado, Nevada and Delaware, played up his Washington state connections: He noted he used to live on Whidbey Island and mentioned Seattle’s May 2012 Cafe Racer shootings before discussing several more recent tragedies.

“Since celebrating the new year, America has seen a school shooting every other day,” Kelly said.

Other victims also pleaded for passage of Initiative 594.

Gun-rights advocates countered the measure would not prevent shootings.

“‘Five ninety four’ is not about universal background checks, because criminals will ignore the law and continue to obtain firearms where most criminals obtain firearms now” — illegal sources,” said Brian Judy, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

Instead, Judy referred to the proposal as an “excessive regulatory scheme” to register gun owners that would serve only to burden law-abiding gun owners.

Phil Shave, executive director of the Washington Arms Collectors, which hosts gun shows, said the measure “would affect millions of our citizens and, in my opinion, accomplish nothing.”

But others, like Joe Deaser, said that even saving one life would make Initiative 594 worthwhile.

Deaser, who owns a gun club in California, which has universal background checks, said they are “a very important part of the puzzle” of preventing violence.

The heated debate took place as other activists milled in the hallway.

Supporters of Initiative 594 wore blue and red stickers that said “YES ON 594: Save Lives. Reduce Crime.”

Second Amendment activists, some of whom took advantage of their right in Washington state to carry firearms openly, wore white stickers with a red line through the words “Gun Control.”

Devyn Hembry, a 24-year-old former DJ from Shelton, carried a semi-automatic rifle and distributed photographs of Giffords carrying a rifle, meant to portray the former congresswoman as a hypocrite.

In general, Kelly said in an interview, he and his wife were pleased with the atmosphere.

“It’s great to see that people are enthusiastic about this from both sides of the issue,” he said.

Kelly said he doesn’t know how involved the couple will be in Washington’s initiative fight.

“We’re looking at a lot of options,” he said.

Photo via Wikimedia