Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly examine how well their Political Action Committee, Americans for Responsible Solutions, did in supporting candidates and ballot measures across the country:

Sometimes it can be difficult to identify a signal through all the noise in the hours after a big election. There were a lot of races called last night, each one with unique factors, local and national, influencing the final outcome.

We felt it important to check in with you — today — on the progress of our shared work as an organization committed to keeping our communities safer from gun violence.

There’s a lot to be proud of. In the races where we took action to elevate the issue of gun safety, we won more times than we lost. And that was no easy feat last night.

First, we won in Washington State, the one place background checks were actually on the ballot. A measure mandating universal background checks passed overwhelmingly, while a gun lobby attempt to confuse voters failed. As you know, we made multiple trips to the state, we ran a paid mail program, and our groups Veterans for Responsible Solutions and Gun Owners for Responsible Solutions were active as well. Our mail program was particularly interesting because we ran sophisticated controlled experiments to determine the precise people we needed to reach, and with what specific message, in order to get them to vote YES on Initiative 594 and NO on 591. In the end, we estimate we may have convinced 20,000 people to support I-594 and 13,000 to oppose I-591. It will also help us in future campaigns.

In Connecticut, Governor Malloy is claiming victory after a hard fought campaign where guns were a central issue in the race. His leadership in the hours, days, and weeks after the tragedy at Sandy Hook made this one of our “must haves” for the night. Our sister organization, Common Sense Connecticut, worked hard to get our message out in the final weeks in the race — when we watched it shift in our favor.

There were losses, no doubt. We’re sad that we lost in races with champions of common sense like Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Mark Udall in Colorado. They stood with us, and we stood with them. And while we’re disappointed with the results in those races, the map shifts in our favor during the 2016 elections, and we look forward to playing offense, as opposed to just defending seats.

We also won a few Senate races: Jeanne Shaheen pulled through, and Al Franken was victorious. In New Hampshire, we ran a powerful ad in the final days of the campaign featuring a father who lost his six-year-old son at the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The House was a mixed bag with results still pending. A split in New Hampshire, loss in Colorado, win in Pennsylvania, loss in Iowa, and Ron Barber’s race still too close to call.

So what does this all mean? It means that we move forward as an organization with a tremendous amount of new knowledge and information about how to defeat the gun lobby in competitive races. We won in the one place background checks were on the ballot, and did so by a wide margin. With near universal support for expanded background checks, it’s an area we’ll expand upon in the future. We lost a few races, but learned a lot about the gun lobby’s tactics in competitive campaigns. Our organization ran a sophisticated data and analytics operation, and we’ll learn even more as numbers come in from the races we invested in.

We also re-affirmed what we knew the day we started this organization shortly after the tragedy at Sandy Hook — that you are the backbone of the campaign to keep our communities safer from gun violence. You contributed, made calls, and knocked on doors. When supporters of common sense solutions vote to keep us safer vote, we win.

And we will keep racking up wins in the future. We’re sure of it.

Thanks for standing with us. We’ll be in touch.

Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2014.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

23 replies on “Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly Offer Post-Election Analysis on Gun-Violence Issues”

  2. If you know any gunowners in Washington State please forward them the link to this flowchart of all the ways they can find themselves in legal trouble: http://i.imgur.com/QLMj1Em.png

    It’s pretty clear the initiative wasn’t designed to fight violent crime. It was designed to entrap unwary gunowners. It’s especially galling that the exemptions to the law are affirmative defenses (i.e. the defendant must prove innocence by a preponderance of the evidence) rather than exceptions (i.e. prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).

    They are planning to push this garbage in other states.

  3. In Arizona we are well trained in the use of our weapons. Arizonans know how to care of their guns. They continue to protect us from criminal harm, and nobody will ever take them away from us in any way, shape or form, regardless of who you believe yourself to be.

    Second Amendment Constitutional rights trumps gun control recklessness. You’re in for the fight of your life.

  4. Sorry GABBY but you do NOT speak for US any more.. only yourself. It is tragic what happened to you.. ever heard of Security, maybe with a gun? Just ONE guy with a gun protecting YOU and YOU are still our Congresswoman and those people are STILL alive.. Think about THAT.

  5. Too bad these two are so narrow minded, another lying PAC. At least one ad they ran in Tucson was a complete fabrication and I’m sure another was as well.

  6. Congrats and thanks for doing a great job!
    It has been weeks since you have posted of Facebook.
    I missed this regular contact and feel it is important for you to maintain this presence.

  7. An unlicensed illegal, drunk driving hit and killed a three year old girl last Saturday in CA.

    I want Illegal Control, not gun control.

    Prosecutors for ICE claim Obama has forced them to release dangerous criminal illegals back into society.

    Be careful the President is putting us in harms way.

  8. It’s so funny how society NOW days will blame the weapon of choice and not the criminal. Buy the time they get done playing the blame game we forget about the victim and feel sorry for the criminal. Not like the old days where if found guilty you got the death penalty.

  9. What part of “The right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT be infringed” don’t you gun-grabbing un-American traitors not get, huh? Gabby’s got an even bigger hole in her head than we thought, and her hubby left his brain in outer space…..

  10. Poor Gabby and the rotten un-Const. Dems who all, all think like her. From Obama on down. Un-elect all these anti-Const. Dems in 2016 who like Gabby will be blabbing about this though they will all pose with guns secretly. LOL

  11. She practices shooting at Cal State Berkley fans no less…picture that!

    https://www.google.com/search?q=giffords+with+guns&client=firefox-a&hs=SvM&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&tbm=isch&imgil=Tuy8MhWaj8FphM%253A%253BhwXlRq1qsA1-JM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.thetruthaboutguns.com%25252F2013%25252F03%25252Frobert-farago%25252Fgun-grabber-gabby-giffords-on-new-ar-15-photos%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Tuy8MhWaj8FphM%253A%252ChwXlRq1qsA1-JM%252C_&usg=__EG6IH9vOP-ib5BVJ_HvM_XVqY4k%3D&biw=1509&bih=879&ved=0CDsQyjc&ei=UwtlVPTmNo_ToASFk4GwDQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Tuy8MhWaj8FphM%253A%3BhwXlRq1qsA1-JM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ftruthaboutguns-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2013%252F03%252FFormer-Congresswoman-spree-killer-survivor-and-gun-control-advocate-and-Tucson-policeman-after-shooting-a-white-guy-with-a-MAC-10-courtesy-faceboook.com_-900×720.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.thetruthaboutguns.com%252F2013%252F03%252Frobert-farago%252Fgun-grabber-gabby-giffords-on-new-ar-15-photos%252F%3B900%3B720

  12. The gun fetishists are starting to get nervous. Their belligerence and vitriol are backfiring on them big time, and they have the uneasy feeling that the vast majority of Americans are on to them. Rational gun legislation is slowly catching on — and most of us understand that’s a good thing. If your weapons cache is more important to you than your fellow man, I hope you enjoy your increasingly lonely existence.

  13. Sorry Roger but some like to think the USC gave them the right to protect their lives and that of their families from….undesirables.

    Please quote for us when more gun laws made us safer.

    If it did, they wouldn’t be trying this again.

  14. By the way, we don’t we try sending the Army to Iraq, without weapons. They could just “love” the bad guys to death.

  15. The Second Amendment was primarily devised to keep the slaves under control. The founders weren’t remotely interested in sanctioning private militias. You guys are all just delusional paranoiacs. And you slander the rational intentions of responsible gun owners.

  16. Slaves? Where did you hear that?

    “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”

    Frederick Douglass

    The USC II Amendment says “the right of people.”

    That sounds a little like white people, but it isn’t.

    Now they try to make gun rights racist.

    Next it will be homophobic. I’ve seen the playbook.

  17. Roger, or anyone else who feels my insistence on my Constitutional advocacy is a “fetish”; I will be happy to meet with you and take you into the interior of our state of Az, in this country, the USA and show you where we are NOT allowed to enter because of the mortal risk. Then I will take you into other, more “open” areas where we can track folks headed north and encounter along the way “layover” areas that have been the scenes of extreme violence. Then, if you’re still with me then we’ll head up to Vekol Valley where the Phoenix “rip” crews hang out. And when we get back you still consider me to have a “fetish” then we’ll head down toward Sierra Vista. Let me know when you’re ready to “put up”.

  18. If you place yourself in situations where you don’t belong, you’ve accepted the risk of getting your head blown off. That doesn’t give you the “right” to amass an arsenal and go looking for trouble. Sounds like you definitely have a fetish for weaponry — and for sticking your nose into places where you have no business. Are you an officer with the Highway Patrol or the Border Patrol? If not, stay in your compound where you belong — and don’t sashay into a Target store packing heat. Grow the hell up.

  19. Stay out of Target?! Are you one of the greeters?
    Roger, whatever is my background first & foremost I am an American citizen who is prohibited from access to our public lands, which are supported by taxpayer dollars because we have too many bad guys hiking north. In the past ten years we have lost access to more public land that used to be preserves intended for hunting. Even hunters with guns are no longer allowed there, just the bad guys and the BP. Now, before any of us can hike in other public areas that were previously open I have to sign an affidavit acknowledging the possibility I could be killed. Thankfully though grudgingly we are allowed to now be armed in these areas though it has sure changed the tenor for camping in Az.
    No, Roger, I don;t have a gun fetish just as the generations of ranchers who have lived along the southern border now need to be armed just outside their own front doors.
    But since you have brought up fetishes I’m curious if you’d like to come stroke my barrel ;-}

  20. Harold, it sure sounds like you have an unhealthy obsession with brown guys that have calves the size of cantaloupes. Whatever floats your boat, man.

  22. Putting lipstick on a loser hag doesn’t make her beautiful.

    YOU LOST.

    BIGTIME.

    Maybe you should rethink your foul political philosophy….?

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