SHOOTING VICTIM OFFERS CONDOLENCES TO NEWTOWN
FORMER UNITED States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has visited the Connecticut town where a gunman killed 26 people last month at an elementary school.
Giffords, who was shot and critically wounded in 2011, was accompanied by her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. She was planning to meet the families of some of the Newtown victims.
Giffords was left partially blind, with a paralysed right arm and a brain injury, after a gunman opened fire at a meet-and-greet outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store on January 8, 2011.
Arizona’s chief federal judge and five others were killed, and 13 people, including Giffords, were injured.
The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences plus 140 years.
Kelly said on the day of the Newtown shooting that it should lead to better gun control in the US.
‘‘This time, our response must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence,’’ Kelly said on his Facebook page, calling for ‘‘a meaningful discussion about our gun laws and how they can be reformed and better enforced to prevent gun violence and death in America’’.
The Newtown gunman, Adam Lanza, shot and killed his mother, then drove to the school and slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers before committing suicide as police arrived.
Giffords has appeared in public only a few times since the shooting. She came face to face with Loughner when he was sentenced in November, and attended ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the shooting.
She received tributes and ovations when she returned to the House of Representatives in January 2012 to say goodbye as she resigned her seat and she delivered the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democratic National Convention in September.
US President Barack Obama invoked the Tucson and Newtown shootings when he spoke in Newtown shortly after the attack. He said four shootings, including the attacks at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, marked his first term in office.
A recent Pew Research Centre report says gun policy accounted for almost 30 per cent of the discussions it examined on blogs and Twitter in the three days after the school massacre.
It compared the response with the Arizona shooting, saying that in the three days after that, just 3 per cent of social media conversations were about gun laws.