Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords and husband Mark Kelly are throwing their political might behind the gun control proposal from Sens. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey with a robocall in the lawmakers’ home states.
The robocall from Giffords’ and Kelly’s new gun control group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, will reach homes in the Philadelphia suburbs of Toomey’s state, while phone calls to Manchin’s constituents in West Virginia will target veterans and male gun owners, according to NBC News.
Gabby Giffords is also expected to lobby members of Congress next week, NBC News reported.
The group’s efforts arrive just as the Senate has voted to begin debate on gun control legislation, overcoming a previously threatened GOP filibuster.
Kelly applauds the senators for “working across party lines to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill” in the ad, which was played on Morning Joe Friday.
Giffords was shot in 2011 while meeting with constituents in Tuscon, Ariz. Since then, she and Kelly—both gun owners themselves—have become vocal advocates for gun control. “If Sen. Toomey’s bill becomes law,” the call says, “our communities will be safer as a result, all while protecting our Second Amendment rights.” Robocalls like this are “just one of the tools people are using to try and give support to Senators who put themselves at political risk to take [gun control] on,” NBC News Political Reporter Kelly O’Donnell explained.
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