Sometimes, it's frustrating that people ask inane questions of politicians and activists at events. I get that they're curious and not everyone is in a position where they should try and ask hard-hitting questions, but it's still frustrating.
Gabby Giffords, for example, got asked a softball question, and the answer to it was always going to be obvious.
Giffords and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly, were at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Charleston shooting.
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona addressed gun safety issues at a town hall in Charleston, South Carolina, alongside his wife, former Representative Gabby Giffords. The event took place on the 10-year anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME church mass shooting, where nine people were killed by a white supremacist.
According to Politico, the timing of Kelly’s appearance was particularly significant, coming shortly after the recent attack on Minnesota lawmakers. The incident, which left House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband dead and another lawmaker and his spouse critically wounded, has put political leaders on edge.
When asked if she ever wanted to give up on her work to end gun violence, Giffords responded with a firm “No way, Jose!” She added that she hopes others are inspired to keep moving forward, regardless of circumstances. Giffords, who survived a shooting attack in 2011 that occurred in her congressional district, continues to advocate for stricter gun laws alongside her husband.
She's not working to end gun violence. She's working to end gun ownership.
That's not my words, either. Those are hers. She literally said, "No more guns. Gone."
If that's what she really wants, why would she just quit? Every anti-gun group out there, including hers, claims that it just wants some "commonsense" gun control measures, that they don't want to take guns away from all of us.
But Giffords clearly said otherwise.
And, realistically, what happened in Minnesota wouldn't exactly break her resolve since something similar happening to her is what prompted her to go down this path.
What we need to remember is that people like Giffords are True Believers. They genuinely believe we, as a people, need to be disarmed. They see it as a righteous mission that they cannot step away from. They're not stopping until we have "No more guns. Gone."
Giffords either knew precisely what she was saying, or the damage from her shooting was so severe that she couldn't be taken seriously at all. It's one or the other, and I'm opting to assume that the fact that she keeps speaking to reporters and the public suggests she didn't have that much brain damage or the kind that would impair cognition.
Even if I'm wrong, it's a safer assumption than to just think they're rolling out a vegetable to parrot their talking points when convenient.
Yet if she is, then she definitely will never quit because the puppetmasters wouldn't let her.
I don't think that's remotely what's happening, though. She knows, and she's on a jihad. She won't quit because she thinks she's on a mission from God.
Not literally, necessarily, but every action is akin to some holy warrior who cannot step away from their battle because to do so would be a sin.
And that's kind of the problem with people like her. They're so absolutely convinced of their own moral righteousness that they can't be reasoned with. They'll just take a little less this year to get what they can get, then come back the next year to take it all once again. It never stops with people like her.
She's held up as a semi-martyr, in a way. She didn't die, but she's still a symbol, which has got to feed the ego pretty much every politician has to have in the first place.
So no, she's not quitting.
Why would she? If she did, her mission might fail, and she'd slip into obscurity.
We can't have that, now, can we?
