Gabby Giffords: 2021 Goal Is to Push Gun Control via ‘Powerful Platforms’ in Hollywood

Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords told Variety magazine one of her goals for 2021 is to see Hollywood writers and producers use their media platforms to push gun control.

Variety reported: “One of Giffords’ priorities for 2021 is to forge relationships with writers, producers, celebrities and decision-makers in Hollywood who can leverage their powerful platforms to speak out against gun violence, call for commonsense laws and support local community efforts to raise awareness about gun safety.”

The magazine noted that Giffords “has started engaging with the entertainment community and hopes to devise more strategic ways to work together in the new year to help shift cultural attitudes and push policies that make for a gun-safe country.”

When asked specifically about the role she hopes Hollywood will play in the gun control push, Giffords said:

Stories are important. Elected officials use them to help get their points across, and for centuries artists have used them to inspire, make us understand points of view different than our own and bring people together. Hollywood and the arts are vitally important to helping us through a period of isolation, bitterness and divisiveness.

But she also made clear that using “film directors” and others in Hollywood to push her gun control message is only one facet of her plan. She noted she will “need and welcome everyone in this fight: doctors, survivors, gun owners, veterans, mothers and fathers,” too.

Giffords has dedicated her public career to gun control efforts since a near-fatal attempt on her life in January 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, while serving as a member of Congress.