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.
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.
The FBI attempted to question Loughner, but he reportedly refused to cooperate with authorities and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights.
Authorities said that Loughner’s motive was unknown. They said that evidence seized from a safe in Loughner’s home included an envelope marked with notes reading “I planned ahead”, “My assassination”, and “Giffords”, as well as a letter from Giffords’s office thanking him for attending a similar event in 2007.
Federal officials charged Loughner the next day with killing federal government employees, attempting to assassinate a member of Congress and attempting to kill federal employees.
Police reports reveal he had purchased a Glock pistol at a Sportsman’s Warehouse store, after passing the required FBI background check, less than six weeks before and attempted to buy additional ammunition for the pistol at a Walmart on the morning of the shooting, but the clerk refused to sell it to him based on his appearance and demeanour.