The right to live

I MOURN FOR CHARLIE KIRK'S family. I didn't agree with almost anything he said, but he had a right to speak. Just as he had a right to go on a work trip and return safely to his wife and two young children at home in the state we share, Arizona.

- GABBY GIFFORDS

Giffords at the Gun Violence Memorial on June 7, 2022

Just as Melissa Hortman, former speaker of the Minnesota state legislature, deserved to be safe at home with her husband and her dog. Instead they were all three shot dead together one night in June.

Just as President Donald Trump had the right to campaign without fear of being assassinated, as two different people tried to do last summer.

Just as I had the right to meet with my constituents safely on Jan. 6, 2011-the day when instead I, a young Congresswoman in a purple district, was nearly assassinated. Eighteen other people were shot, and six were killed.

Our stories are unique, but what Charlie Kirk, President Trump, Melissa Hortman, and I all have in common is that someone who wanted to kill us had a gun.

We can and should talk about political violence, and its toxic relationship to political rhetoric. We can and must talk about social media's role in these moments. We all, as individual Americans, need to do a better job considering our words. But anyone who responds to preventable tragedies like this-tragedies that over time begin to erode the very fabric of our country-by refusing to face the problem of gun violence and crime head-on is missing the point.

What we share, and what puts all of us in danger-from elected leaders to little children, like those shot while praying in church in Minnesota a few weeks ago-is the overwhelming prevalence of guns in this country and the loopholes that make it appallingly easy for dangerous people to access them.