Gabby Giffords was always a Democrat, but she wasn’t anti-gun. Not for a long time, anyway.

In fairness, being shot does occasionally make people take a step back and reevaluate things. However, Giffords was running for office in a pro-gun state, so it was being rabidly anti-gun wasn’t in her best interest at the time.

After she was shot and left Congress, though, she turned all her attention to gun control. Whether it was from being shot or whether she always held these beliefs, it’s impossible for us on the outside to know.

However, I can laugh at her for talking about how pushing gun control requires “courage.”

Only blocks away from where two shooters gunned down four people in Jersey City last month in what was ruled a hate crime, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday announced a $20 million plan to combat gun violence.

Giffords, who was the victim of a near-fatal shooting in 2011, said it’s “time to come together” and tackle gun violence.

…

“Stopping gun violence takes courage, the courage to do what’s right,” Giffords said to a room of at least 150 people inside the Mary McLeod Bethune Life Center in Jersey City.

“Be bold, be courageous. The nation’s counting on you,” she added. “We must never stop fighting. Fight, fight, fight!”

So the one-time congresswoman who was photographed for her campaign on a gun range with an AR-15 so she could “toughen her image” now crusades against guns.

In other words, now that there’s absolutely nothing to risk, she’s all about the “courage” to fight for gun control. Worse, she chooses a gun controlled city in one of the most gun-controlled states to preach to the choir and has the audacity to talk about courage?

There’s not a damn thing she did here that was brave except for continuing to ignore her rank hypocrisy on guns.

Further, it’s rather insulting to those of us on the other side of the debate. Arguing that it takes courage to fight for gun control suggests there’s something to lose by fighting for gun control. Since this is New Jersey she’s saying this in, it’s certainly not losing elections. The implication is that there’s a risk to life and limb for making a stand like this.

And that pisses me off.

We aren’t the dangerous ones and we’re good and fed up with being treated like we are.

Meanwhile, we’re the people folks like Giffords turned to when she wanted to “toughen her image” for the voters; when she wanted to look like a badass. Where were her claims of courage then?

“Oh, but Tom, she got shot. That changes things!”

Bull. Rep. Steve Scalise got shot too, and he’s still as pro-gun as he was five seconds before a Bernie Bro opened fire. The “she got shot” justification is bull. Giffords and her husband, Senatorial candidate Mark Kelly, made a choice. For Giffords, it was to betray the image she portrayed to get elected in the first place so she could capitalize on her status as a survivor.

That didn’t take courage, that was nothing more than rank opportunism.