Rep. Ron Barber: Gabrielle Giffords Memorial is Being Politicized

By Beth Baumann

On January 8, 2011, then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot outside a grocery store in Tuscon, Arizona, where she was meeting with constituents. The shooting killed six and left 13 injured, including the Congresswoman.

Fast forward seven years. There’s now a memorial in the works by the “January 8th Foundation,” which has raised over $5 million in the last past few years.

To help with the efforts, the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill which would provide an additional $2.5 million state funding to help make the memorial a reality. The only hitch? The State Senate has never had the bill come before them, something U.S. Representative Ron Barber says has become political.

“I’m really concerned that people who wanted to stop this memorial from being funded in the Senate decided to politicize it. And it’s not political, but that’s what they made it,” Barber told the Associated Press.

Don’t get me wrong, I think what happened on that day is tragic and it should never happen again but it’s very ironic to say the State Senate is making a political issue out of nothing. As soon as Congresswoman Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, stepped out into the limelight and used …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms