It has been a summer of headline-making gun violence. June 14: A gunman assassinates Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home. July 28: A gunman kills four at 345 Park Avenue in New York City. August 27: Two children are shot and killed during a prayer service at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minnesota. And September 10: Political activist Charlie Kirk is murdered at a peaceful event on a college campus in Utah.
Nearly 15 years ago, Gabby Giffords, then a congresswoman representing Arizona’s Eighth District, was on the receiving end of one such shot. At a constituent event she was hosting in front of a Safeway grocery store, a gunman opened fire, killing six people and wounding 13 others, including Giffords, who was shot in the head at close range, just above her eye. She underwent a decompressive craniectomy, where doctors removed part of her skull. Then she spent six months at a rehabilitation center in Houston, relearning how to walk and talk. Doctors said her survival was miraculous.
As a result of her brain injury, she was diagnosed with partial paralysis on her right side and aphasia, a condition that can impact speech and the ability to communicate. “I hope anyone who sees or meets me—or anyone else with aphasia—will recognize that I’m still me,” Giffords tells me over email in an interview for this story. “Even if my words don’t come quite as easily.” After Sandy Hook, in 2013, Giffords and her husband, former astronaut and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, founded Giffords, an organization that seeks to end gun violence in this country.
Their mission is far from over, and I felt it firsthand when I discovered that someone I’ve known since childhood was killed in the August NYC shooting. These horrifying acts feel like a distant, surreal part of the news cycle until they show up on your doorstep. And at this rate, they will eventually hit close to home for us all.
I asked Giffords what she does with her anger around such senseless violence, and what her transition back into public life was like after being targeted for simply doing her job. “I won’t live my life in fear,” she says. “I’m alive—I survived an assassination attempt. So I try to take advantage of the time I was given, when so many others ran out of it.”
