On Friday, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D) toured Newtown, CT in the wake of December’s Sandy Hook massacre which killed 26 people including 20 first graders. Giffords herself held the visit just days before her own two-year anniversary of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz,, which killed several people and gravely wounding Giffords herself leaving her with a paralyzed right arm, partially blind and a brain injury.
When word of her visit reached the offices of Connecticut state Rep. DebraLee Hovey (R) she immediately took to her Facebook account wherein she wrote: “Gabby Giffords stay out of my towns!!!” The post went on to state that the meeting between Giffords, state leaders and families were simply driven by “pure political motives.” Now, according to a Huffington Post article written January 7, 2013, Rep. Hovey has apologized.
On Monday, Hovey told the New Hampshire Register that her “comments were meant to be protective of the privacy of the families and our community as we work to move on, and were in no way intended as an insult to Congresswoman Giffords personally.” Hovey went on to explain that “We are all very sensitive to the potential for this event to be exploited for political purposes.”
Despite the fact that Giffords resigned her post in Congress last year and has no designs on any political office now or in the future, Rep. Hovey apparently still sees some hidden political maneuver in Giffords visit of like-situated sympathy for the victims of gun violence.
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