Florida school shooting: Gabrielle Giffords slams politicians, says 'we chose this fate'
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A former student went on a shooting rampage at a Florida high school, leaving 17 dead while panicked students barricaded themselves inside classrooms and frantic parents raced to the scene.
USA TODAY
PHOENIX — Former U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded in the 2011 Tucson-area shooting that left six people dead, criticized political inaction on guns in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school Wednesday.Â
“Every day we fail to take action, we chose this fate,” Giffords wrote on Twitter. “We tolerate politicians who fail to acknowledge this crisis and vote against our safety. We let our gun violence epidemic continue day after deadly day.”Â
Authorities said that 17 people were killed in Wednesday’s shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school. The gunman, a former student, was taken into custody.Â
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‘Pursue the moral necessity of peace’
Giffords, who became an advocate for gun control after retiring from Congress, said incidents like Wednesday’s shooting create fear, but, she wrote, “our fear cannot compare to what our innocent children felt as the gunshots rang out, bullets flew through the halls of their school, and their teachers and classmates were gunned down.”Â
The accounts from today’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida strike fear into all Americans. Is it safe to send our kids to school? Are we safe in our homes and communities?
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) February 15, 2018
Giffords, who was partly paralyzed from the 2011 shooting and still struggles with speech, wrote that the nation needs to “summon the courage to fight against this fear.”
“We must find the courage to imagine a country where these massacres do not occur,” she wrote. “Our leaders must find the courage to escape the confines of their politics pursue the moral necessity of peace safety.”
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Giffords said that Americans cannot wall themselves off from gun violence; nor, she said, is the solution found in “the deadly cycle of arming ourselves against each other.”
“Defenders of the status quo — advocates of the gun industry the politicians paid to defend it — will tell you that events like these are virtual acts of nature, products of mental illness or bad parenting, beyond our ability to control,” she wrote. “This couldn’t be further from the truth.”
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Max Charles, second from right, 14, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., speaks to members of the media after being picked up by family members at a nearby hotel, in Coral Springs, Fla. A former student opened fire at the Florida high school Wednesday, killing more than a dozen people and sending scores of students fleeing into the streets in the nation’s deadliest school shooting since a gunman attacked an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.Â
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Giffords was shot by Jared Loughner during an informal meet-and-greet at a Safeway store just outside Tucson city limits in January 2011.
Loughner went on to shoot and kill six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. He also wounded 12 other people. Bystanders tackled him and wrestled him to the ground when he stopped to reload.
Loughner was found guilty and was sentenced to life in a federal prison.
Giffords’ gun-control advocacy
Giffords stepped down from her congressional seat in 2012, about a year after the shooting. She and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, started the group Americans for Responsible Solutions in January 2013.
In 2016, that advocacy group adopted the last name of its co-founder: Giffords.
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According to its website, the group has helped pass more than 200 gun laws in 45 states and Washington, D.C. But its calls for federal legislation requiring a universal background check for firearms purchases have gone unheeded by Congress.Â
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Gabrielle Giffords, first elected to represent the southern Arizona district in November 2006, becoming the third woman from Arizona to be sent to Congress, and has habitually sent news releases and tweets regarding gun control.
After President Trump’s first State of the Union address in January, she criticized him for mentioning the problem of mass shootings but not offering any policy changes to curb it.
“Mr. President, stop ignoring the unacceptable and devastating rate of gun violence in this country,†she wrote, “and take responsibility for enacting solutions.â€
Follow Richard Ruelas on Twitter: @ruelaswritings
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