Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Shooting victim and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and her husband Mark Kelly at the U.S. Capitol April 16, 2013.

Updated at 2:50 pm EDT

Six years ago today, 32 people were gunned down on the campus of Virginia Tech, notes former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a 2011 outdoor shooting in Tucson, Arizona, that also killed a federal judge and five others, as she makes the rounds of the U.S. Capitol today pressing for action in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shootings that claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators.

Six years ago we lost too many lives at Virginia Tech shooting. I’m working hard to prevent more tragic deaths from gun violence. join me.

— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) April 16, 2013

As Senate Democratic leaders struggle to find the 60 votes needed to approve amendments to the gun safety bill they are trying to take to the floor this week, Giffords was meeting today with Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has joined with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania in sponsoring an amendment to require more stringent background checks of gun buyers.

Giffords also was meeting today with the Democratic caucus — two of whom, Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mark Begich of Alaska, voted last week to prevent the gun bill from advancing. Sixteen Republicans joined most of the Democrats and two independents in voting to advance the bill, but few of those appear ready to support the Manchin-Toomey amendment.

Last week, parents and other relatives of the Newtown victims pressed Congress for action — and the Senate voted to advance the bill. Today, Giffords is here, once again asking for a vote.

Glad @sentoomey and @sen_joemanchin are moving forward on backgroundchecks. Americans don’t want political games, they want progress.

— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) April 10, 2013

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said today he hoped that “powerful” speeches to the Senate Democratic caucus by Manchin and Giffords’  husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, would help get more Democratic votes for the background-check provision. “A lot of people are struggling at this point,” he said, noting supporters need nine or 10 Republicans to get the 60-vote super-majority needed.

Heidi Przybyla and Jim Rowley contributed to this report from the Capitol. See their full report here.

Original post is Giffords: Six Years After Virginia Tech, Presses for Newtown Action by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Retired NASA astronaut and Navy Capt. Mark Kelly, right, and his wife, shooting victim and former Rep. Gabby Giffords arrive for a Senate Judiciary Committee followed by Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley before hearing about gun control on Capitol Hill on Jan. 30, 2013.

“The time is now.”

The words of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was grievously wounded in a gunman’s attack in Tucson in2011, appearing today at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“You must act,” Giffords told the Senate committee, holding its first hearing on the issue of curbing gun violence since the latest massacre that shook the nation, the shootings of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, last month.

“Be bold, be courageous,” Giffords told the committee. “Americans are counting on you.”

Her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, shared a picture of the couple before the committee and posted these notes on n Twitter:

@gabbygiffords delivered remarks in congress today for the first time in over two years. We’ve come a long, long way. #Giffords

— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) January 30, 2013

My courageous wife @gabbygiffordsabout to give opening statement at gun hearing. twitter.com/ShuttleCDRKell…

— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) January 30, 2013

“Americans are looking to us for solutions and action,” said Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

There should be no question, Leahy said, about expanding the instant background checks required for gun-buyers.

He also said this, at a hearing that will include testimony the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre.

“The Second Amendment is secure and will remain secure.”

Original post is Giffords on Gun Control: ‘Time is Now’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ida Mae Astute/ABC via Getty Images

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured two years ago when a gunman opened fired in Tucson, Arizona, and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly talk to Diane Sawyer about the need for changes in gun control laws and greater awareness of mental health issues on Jan. 5, 2013 in New York City.

Two years after the Tucson, Arizona, shootings that critically injured former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, she and her husband are adding their voices to a movement for gun control.

Big-city mayors are marking the anniversary with a TV ad tailored for the Washington market and communities that have suffered mass shootings featuring the mother of a 9-year-old girl killed in the Tucson shootings.

“Enough,” Giffords says in an interview on  ABC”s “World News with Diane Sawyer” airing tonight.

“After the shooting in Tucson, there was talk about addressing some of these issues, [and] again after [a movie theater massacre in] Aurora,” Colorado, her husband Mark Kelly, the astronaut, says in an interview also following the Dec. 14 killings of 20 young schoolchildren and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. “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.”

Gifffords and Kelly visited Newtown to meet with families of the victims.

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 says in the interview, excerpts released by ABC. “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 are proposing “common sense” changes through “Americans for Responsible Solutions.”  They propose a comprehensive background check for the private sale of firearms and controls on large magazines of ammunition.

Jared Loughner, the accused shooter in Tucson, used a magazine with 33 rounds. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter who also  killed his mother and himself, used numerous 30-round magazines in a Bushmaster AR-15.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns today released a new TV ad featuring Roxanna Green, mother of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old killed in Tucson. It opens with a scene from the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. In the ad, Green demands that elected officials in Washington take immediate action to curb gun violence in America.

“I have one question for our political leaders,” Green says in the ad. “When will you find the courage to stand up to the gun lobby?  Whose child has to die next?”

The ad is airing on Washington, DC, cable through Jan. 14, the group says, and in markets where there have been mass shootings:  Tucson, Waco, Texas, Roanoke, Denver, Binghamton, N.Y., and Milwaukee.

“How many more children must die before Washington does something to end our gun violence problem?” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chair of the mayors’ group and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, says in a statement accompanying the ad’s release.

“Roxanna Green knows all too well the pain of losing a loved one gun violence – sadly, there are parents and siblings and friends who learn this every day in our country,” says co-chair Thomas Menino, mayor of Boston. “It’s time for Washington to act to reduce gun violence — for the 33 Americans that are killed every day and for all of our children.”

President Barack Obama has charged Vice President Joe Biden with assembling an agenda for legislative action following the Newtown shootings, asking for those goals by the end of this month.

The National Rifle Association has proposed stationing an armed guard at every school.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, urging Congress after the Newtown shootings  “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.”

“I bought a gun at Walmart recently and I went through a background check,” Kelly says in the ABC interview. “”Why can’t we just do that and make it more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to get guns?”

Giffords has undergone a long and arduous recovery aided by physical therapy, speech therapy and yoga. She has been able to ride a horse and is preparing for a tandem bicycle ride with her husband, a space shuttle pilot. She plans to apply the same resolve toward the mission of gun control, Kelly says. “Gabby works very hard in her rehab,” he says. “Now we intend to work very hard on this new project.”

Original post is Tucson Two Years Later, Newtown: `Whose Child Has to Die Next?’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

A man places a plush doll at a makeshift memorial for Sandy Hook shooting victims on Dec. 19, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.

If there’s been a notable shift in Washington’s rhetoric about gun control since Newtown, public opinion has moved only modestly.

Following the shooting of 20 children and six educators at a primary school in Connecticut last week, American opinion about guns breaks s little differently in the Pew Research Center’s surveys: 49 percent say it’s more important to control gun ownership, while 42 percent say it’s more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.

This is the first time since President Barack Obama took office that more Americans prioritize gun control than the right to own guns, according to Pew President Andrew Kohut. “However,” Kohut notes, “support for gun control remains lower than before Obama took office. In April 2008, 58 percent said it was more important to control gun ownership; just 37 percent prioritized protecting gun rights.

Following a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater last summer, 47 percent said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 46 percent said it was more important to protect gun rights.

Opinion is divided over whether to ban semi-automatic guns – 44 percent favor such a ban, Pew has found, while 49 percent oppose it. Far more favor banning bullets designed to explode or penetrate bullet-proof vests (56 percent) and high capacity ammunition clips (53 percent). A ban on all handguns is widely opposed: 67 percent oppose it.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism also has found in the social networking media “far more discussion of gun policy following this event than after the 2011 Tucson shooting” of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. “In the social media conversation, calls for stricter gun control measures exceed defenses of current gun laws by more than two-to-one. <> Dec. 20, 2012.

Original post is Gun Control: Support Modestly Up Since Newtown Shootings by Political Capital.

Photograph by Yang Lei/Xinhua News Agency/eyevine/Redux

FBI agent covers the broken window of the apartment of James Holmes, the suspect who opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The gun-slaying of 12 people in Aurora, Colorado, has barely moved the needle on public opinion about gun control in America.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 46 percent say it is is more important to protect the rights of Americans to own guns.

That is “virtually unchanged” from the 45 percent who put gun regulation over gun control in an April survey, when 49 percent sided with gun rights.

“Other recent major episodes of gun violence, such as the 2011 Tucson shooting (of former Representative Gabrielle Giffords) and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, also had little effect on public opinion about gun laws,” writes Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

Two thirds of those surveyed say shootings like the midnight attack in a movie theater in Aurora are just the isolated acts of troubled individuals. Just one quarter of those surveyed say shootings like this reflect broader problems in American society.

 The latest survey of 1,100 adults was conducted July 26-29. It has a 3.6 percent margin of error.

Original post is Post-Colorado Shooting: Gun Control Sentiment no Stronger Than Before by Political Capital.

Pool Photo

Rep Gabrielle Giffords tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie on Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson.

Arizona Republican voters will select a nominee today to run for Gabrielle Giffords’s old seat.

A special election on June 12th will determine who will complete Giffords’s unexpired term in the Tucson-area congressional district. Giffords resigned in January to concentrate on her recovery from a gunshot wound 15 months ago.

The four Republicans seeking her seat are Frank Antenori, a state senator; Jesse Kelly, a businessman and Iraq War veteran who lost to Giffords in 2010 by fewer than 2 percentage points; Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel; and Dave Sitton, a sports broadcaster.

The winner of the Republican primary will face Ron Barber, a former Giffords aide who’s the only Democrat running.

Candidates also are preparing to seek a full two-year term in a revised district that, as redrawn by the state’s redistricting commission, is about two percentage points more Democratic-leaning than the current district, which backed McCain over Obama 52-46% in 2008. It is one of three vacancies in the House of Representatives, which Republicans control by a 242-190 margin.

Original post is Could Gabrielle Giffords’s Seat Go Republican? by Political Capital.