Gun control: Can Gabby Giffords win over gun owners by firing off some shots?

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who was shot more than two years ago by a disturbed young man, this week launched her latest push for expanded background checks for firearms purchases by firing a gun herself.

Ms. Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, debuted their seven-state, seven-day “Rights and Responsibilities Tour” at a Las Vegas shooting range on Monday before traveling to Alaska on Tuesday.

Is this move a sign of Giffords’ commitment to her mission? Yes, most certainly. It was, after all, the first time she’d fired a weapon since the attack in Tucson. Politically sound tactics or not, she surely had to wrestle with her own feelings about holding a gun again. And she did run the risk of alienating some gun control supporters who might have found the visual too much to take.

It’s an indication, no doubt, too, of the always-charged political sensitivities around the gun control debate. Even Giffords, who faces a long battle to regain movement and speech, must reaffirm her pro-gun status in order to advocate for more gun restrictions.

Certainly the move – or public relations stunt, depending on your view – was provocative enough to draw attention anew to an issue that Congress turned away from earlier this year.

In April, a bipartisan bill that would have imposed tougher background check requirements failed in the Senate, succumbing to a successful campaign by the National Rifle Association and others and stunning those families of the victims of the Newtown and Virginia Tech school shootings who had become activists for the cause.

After the vote, President Obama, who had pushed vigorously for the legislation, chastised the gun lobby for a misleading public campaign at the center of which was a suggestion that the bill’s supporters wanted to take away people’s guns.

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