Friends,

Below you'll find the email we sent three years ago today sharing the heartbreaking news of yet another mass shooting, this time at a Florida high school.

The response from Congress in the months that followed was downright unimaginable: they chose to do nothing at all to stop it from happening again. And indeed, gun violence continues unabated in America to this day.

We took it upon ourselves to fight for change by electing a gun safety majority in the House. They passed H.R. 8, the background checks bill, but it sat on Mitch McConnell's desk every day since.

But that's about to change. With a newly elected gun safety president and gun safety majorities in both the House and Senate, it's finally time to make universal background checks the law of the land. And today's a great day to say you're still in the fight.

Sign our petition: tell Congress to pass universal background checks -- legislation that will save lives.

ADD YOUR NAME: [link removed]

You can read our original email from 2018 below.

Team Giffords

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Friends -

The morning announcements at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School today included the daily affirmation "Life supports me in every way possible."

They plugged the showing of the movie Hidden Figures in the garden students created as a tribute to the environmentalist the school is named after. And there was a Valentine's Day reminder to all students that "love has many definitions, but abuse isn't one of them." It was, by all accounts, an uplifting start to a day that ended with scenes of students running out of their school in fear while police officers rushed in toward classrooms with their guns drawn.

Today's school shooting in Florida was the 18th in the United States in the first 44 days of 2018.

18.

Our nation's schools should be the safest spaces in our communities, full of the kindness on display during Marjory Stoneman Douglas's morning announcements.They should not be the place of horror.

I wish that I could sit here and say that the scenes from earlier today were unthinkable or unimaginable, but they are not.

We have seen them before, and we will see them again. We will see terrified children running out of schools with their hands in the air as backpacks flap on their backs. We will see the parents in parking lots crying, desperate for information about their kids. And we will no doubt see the pictures and videos from inside the school that we saw from today.

But we do not have to.

We can decide that we have seen enough. Congress knows how to solve this problem. They can protect our kids in their classrooms, in the cafeteria, and on the playgrounds.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this shooting, their families, and their friends. But the truth is, for those who have the power to act and to save lives, thoughts and prayers are not nearly enough.

It is long past time for Congress to find the courage to take on the gun lobby -- to do it for our communities, for our children, and for each other.

We do not have to accept these horrific acts of violence as routine, and we must never stop demanding that our leaders not only acknowledge this devastating problem, but take long overdue action to keep our children safe. Thank you for standing with me in this fight.

All my best,

Gabby Giffords

Sign our petition: tell Congress to pass universal background checks -- legislation that will save lives.

ADD YOUR NAME: [link removed]

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