I recently covered Northwell Health’s second Gun Violence Prevention Forum, and from that experience came this editorial….
Listening to Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords speak, you’re quickly overcome by the urge to cry. The former congresswoman was once known for her incisive rhetoric, delivered with a magnetic smile. Then, at age 40, she was shot one sunny January day in 2011 outside Tucson, Ariz., while chatting with constituents in front of a Safeway supermarket.
The 22-year-old gunman, angered by Giffords’s political views, had targeted her. Six died in the attack, and 10 others besides Giffords were injured.
Giffords may have survived, but her speech did not. Her words once flowed easily, but now she measures each one, rehearsing phrases to string them together in coherent sentences before speaking in public.
It is a miracle that she is able to utter a word. The bullet that struck her pierced the left side of her brain, leaving her unable to talk for two months. Through speech therapy, she regained the ability to speak, but only in short, labored bursts.
That challenge was obvious during Northwell Health’s second Gun Violence Prevention Forum, a two-hour meeting of gun safety experts, medical practitioners, policy makers and elected leaders from around the country on Dec. 10. Giffords spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who supports a federal universal background check for firearm purchases, and whom Giffords, a Democrat, has endorsed for Congress.
We applaud Northwell Health — in particular Michael Dowling, its president and CEO — for taking a leading role in fostering dialogue about gun safety, while also funding gun violence research: Northwell put up $1 million last December to study America’s “pandemic of gun violence,” as Dowling calls it.
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