"I've known the darkest of days. Days of pain and uncertain recovery," Giffords said. "But confronted by despair, I've summoned hope."
The co-founder of Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence was shot in 2011 during a constituent event near Tucson, resulting in a traumatic brain injury that makes it difficult for her to speak.
"My recovery is a daily fight, but fighting makes me stronger," Giffords said. "Words once came easily. Today I struggle to speak, but I've not lost my voice. America needs all of us to speak out even when you have to fight to find the words."
The panel discussion, which was pre-recorded and moderated by ProPublica senior editor Zahira Torres, a former El Paso Times editor, streamed online Wednesday as part of the Texas Tribune Festival, an annual event that explores major policy issues.
The gun violence panel looked at what has changed and what hasn't one year after the Aug. 3, 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart.
Twenty-three people were killed by an alleged white supremacist armed with an AK-47, who is accused of driving from North Texas to El Paso to target Hispanics. He is facing federal hate crime charges. He's also charged with capital murder of multiple persons in state court.
Other panelists included El Paso Pastor Michael Grady, state Rep. César Blanco, Peter Ambler, the executive director and co-founder of Giffords, and Kristi Daugherty, the CEO of Emergence Health Network in El Paso.
Since the El Paso mass shooting, committees in the Texas House and Senate have been accepting testimony on ways to reduce mass violence. Gov. Greg Abbott also issued several executive orders.
Asked what legislation may realistically pass when the Legislature next meets in January, Blanco, D-El Paso, listed several ideas that have been brought forward.
They include eliminating the straw purchase of firearms, background investigations for person-to-person gun sales, and real-time reporting of convictions to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
"There are a variety of other proposals as well, however I think some of the proposals fall short, some of the executive orders fall short of things such as eliminating assault weapons, such as eliminating high-capacity magazines," Blanco said.
Ambler, who is from El Paso, said there is widespread support for universal background checks. A February 2020 University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll found that 69% of those polled support background checks on all gun sales.
Carla Byrne, whose brother was killed in the Odessa-Midland shooting a month after the attack in El Paso, is pushing for stricter background checks. In that instance, such a measure may have kept the gunman, who had previously failed a background check, from obtaining a weapon.
Authorities say he purchased his assault-type rifle in a private sale. Police shot and killed him, but only after he had killed seven, wounded fellow officers and left dozens others injured on a Saturday leading to Labor Day 2019.
Despite this widespread support for background checks, Ambler said a handful of Republican lawmakers who received campaign funding from the NRA are standing in the way of meaningful legislative reform.
Grady, whose daughter, Michelle, was shot three times in the El Paso attack, recounted getting a call from his wife and the events that followed the day of the mass shooting.
He remembers arriving at the store and trying to get as close as he could to the Walmart, seeing Michelle's gunshot wounds; pressing to get Michelle on an ambulance and her going into surgery at the hospital.
"By the grace of God, she survived," Grady said.
We need to acknowledge that "words do matter," he said, closing the discussion.
"What I believe the nation should learn is that we have to be accountable not only for what we say, but how we model this concept of 'One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,'" Grady said.
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