Looking for a sensible solution to gun violence

Enough

Our Fight to Keep America Safe From Gun Violence

By Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly

Scribner. 240 pp. $25

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Reviewed by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

On Jan. 8, 2011, in another episode of what has become a peculiarly American horror story, a mentally disturbed young man armed with a semiautomatic handgun killed six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, in an Arizona shopping center parking lot.

Among the wounded, taking a bullet to the brain at close range, was Gabby Giffords, then a congresswoman, who had scheduled an informal meeting with constituents.

Enough is both an account of Giffords' courageous rehabilitation and ongoing recovery and an urgent plea to make substantive changes in the way the nation addresses the problem of gun violence.

Though her husband and coauthor Mark Kelly acknowledges that he had writing help, the retired astronaut and Navy pilot most likely is the one to credit with the book's measured pace, one that avoids becoming either overly dramatic or treacly. Even though the tone is matter-of-fact, the couple's candor about Gifford's determined effort to recover, her limitations and triumphs makes this a story of personal as well as political transformation.

Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun control group the two launched after the 2012 killing of 20 young children and six teachers in Newtown, Conn., advocates universal background checks, stiffer punishment for gun traffickers, and efforts to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of those convicted of domestic abuse.

Though the story of the tragedy and its aftermath may be familiar to many, the details, particularly the description of shooter Jared Loughner's behavior before he showed up in front of the Safeway, make for chilling reading. Readers unfamiliar with the evolution of the National Rifle Association, its political clout, the way it punishes (and rewards) gun makers and its global reach may find the gun-lobby primer instructive, if not alarming.

Throughout Enough, Kelly and Giffords, gun-rights champions attempting to find what they consider rational solutions to the gun violence plaguing the nation, make a determined bid for the middle ground. "The NRA was muzzling the reasonable people and silencing any real possibility of discussion and debate. That had to change," they concluded after a cross-country listening tour.

It's pretty clear that the former astronaut and congresswoman will use every ounce of tenacity they have, and they appear to have plenty, to exert a lasting influence on the national gun-violence debate. What isn't evident is whether other Americans, untouched by personal tragedy and experience, are as ready to oppose a powerful lobby and a largely docile Congress and agree that the time has come to say, "Enough."