Capt. Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), issued a statement Tuesday comparing the shooting in Ross Township, Pa. with the 2011 Tucson shooting that left 6 dead and more than a dozen others injured, including Giffords.
“Gabby and I were saddened to hear about the terrible tragedy in Ross Township,” Kelly wrote on the website of the couple’s gun-control advocacy organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions. “The shooting bears a heartbreaking similarity to the Congress on Your Corner event in Tucson where a disturbed person fired dozens of rounds, wounding and killing Americans as they participated in one of the cornerstones of our democracy: a public meeting with elected officials. These horrific shootings have become all too frequent, and we’ve learned that they don’t discriminate. They can happen anytime, anywhere, from Tucson in the Southwest desert, to Aurora in the Rocky Mountains, to Oak Creek in suburban Wisconsin, now to Ross Township in rural Pennsylvania. We have to do more — all of us — to make sure future tragedies like last night’s aren’t visited upon other communities.”
Correction: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Tucson.