by JOHN COLSON
Giffords takes the road less traveled, in Arizona, anyway I SMILED when I learned that Gabrielle Giords, former threeterm member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Arizona, is starting a gun-control lobbying organization, “Americans for Responsible Solutions.â€? Giords, you may recall, was shot down by a lunatic with a pistol a little more than a year ago in a Safeway parking lot near Tuscon, Ariz., where she was holding a “Congress On Your Cornerâ€? meeting with her constituents. Jared Loughner, 22, apparently had been planning to kill her for some time, as investigators found notes he had written proclaiming that intent. He is now serving out a life term in prison, although there were signs for a while that he might be declared incompetent to stand trial and get a vacation in a mental institution instead of a prison sentence or a trip to the gas chamber. Giords survived the attack, and continues to improve, according to news reports, but she resigned her congressional seat and now calls herself a “former Republican,â€? according to published accounts. This feisty woman supported gun rights as a legislator (she is from Arizona, after all) and thus kept on the right side of the National Rie Association (pun intended). In one 2008 vote, she sided against a Washington, D.C., law prohibiting possession of handguns in the home. It should be said that, while Giords was comfortable with the label “gun-rights supporter,â€? she was never an ardent soldier for that cause. In fact, the NRA apparently gave her a tepid grade of “Câ€? for her voting record in the years before she was shot, and had downgraded even that
mark to a “D+â€? in her latest term. It’s tough to stay in the good graces of delusional zealots who like to pretend we’re still living in the Wild West of the 1870s. But now she is taking on what some say is the most powerful political lobbying group in America — the same NRA that once gave her passing marks on their legislative report cards. “America has seen an astounding 11 mass shootings since a madman used a semiautomatic pistol with an extended ammunition clip to shoot me and kill six others. Gun violence kills more than 30,000 Americans annually,â€? declared an Op Ed in USA Today on Jan. 8, written by Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly. Pretty gutsy thing to do, even if she has resigned from Congress and no longer has to worry about the NRA scuttling her next election. To my way of thinking, the Wild West was the last era and region in this country when universal gun ownership and frequent use made any sense at all, at least in terms of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. For one thing, that was the last time we had any real need for anything like a “well-armed militiaâ€? that could do battle against enemies, perceived or invented. Angry Native Americans, cunning robbers and thieves, whacked-out killers with time on their hands — it was wise then to have a loaded gun close to hand. All that is pretty much ended, except for the whacked out killers. They seem to be regaining some of their old dominance, and it’s why Giords takes the road less traveled, in Arizona, anyway.
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