Gabrielle Dee Giffords is an American retired politician and gun control advocate who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives representing Arizona’s 8th congressional district from January 2007 until January 2012, when she resigned due to a severe brain injury suffered during an assassination attempt.
A member of the Democratic Party, she was the third woman in Arizona’s history to be elected to the U.S. Congress. Though a moderate on the issue during her time in Congress, Giffords has since become an ardent advocate for gun control.
In January 2013, she and her husband launched Americans for Responsible Solutions, a non-profit organization and Super-PAC which later joined with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence to become Giffords.
On October 13, 2022, she was named the Grand Marshal of the 2023 Rose Parade and will preside over the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game.
What happened to Gabby Giffords?
On January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in the Tucson metropolitan area.
Six people were killed, including federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll; Gabe Zimmerman, one of Giffords’s staffers; and a 9-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green.
Giffords was holding the meeting, called “Congress on Your Corner”, in the parking lot of a Safeway store when Jared Lee Loughner drew a pistol and shot her in the head before proceeding to fire on other people.
One additional person was injured in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. News reports identified the target of the attack to be Giffords, a Democrat representing Arizona’s 8th congressional district. She was shot through the head at point-blank range, and her medical condition was initially described as “critical”.
Loughner, a 22-year-old Tucson man who was fixated on Giffords, was arrested at the scene. Federal prosecutors filed five charges against him, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress and the assassination of a federal judge.
Loughner previously had been arrested once (but not convicted) on a minor drug charge and had been suspended by his college for disruptive behaviour.
Court filings include notes handwritten by Loughner indicating he planned to assassinate Giffords. Loughner did not cooperate with authorities, invoking his right to remain silent. He was held without bail and indicted on 49 counts.
In January 2012, Loughner was found by a federal judge to be incompetent to stand trial based on two medical evaluations, which diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. On August 7, Loughner had a hearing in which he was judged competent. He pleaded guilty to 19 counts, and in November 2012 was sentenced to life in prison.