--- title: Gabby Giffords: The Big Lesson from Our Progress on Guns description: After a wave of mass shootings and the first federal gun control legislation in decades, Gabby Giffords on moving ahead on gun violence canonical: https://time.com/6197144/gabrielle-giffords-gun-control/ author: Gabrielle Giffords article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-07-14T15:35:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:54.528Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Gabby Giffords: The Big Lesson from Our Small Progress on Guns og:description: After a wave of mass shootings and the first federal gun control legislation in decades, Gabby Giffords on moving ahead on gun violence og:url: https://time.com/6197144/gabrielle-giffords-gun-control/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92c94b7b103f879d/698a33a709208f29db419573/GettyImages-1408155686.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Washington, DC Premiere Of GABBY GIFFORDS WON'T BACK DOWN og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Gabby Giffords: The Big Lesson from Our Small Progress on Guns twitter:description: After a wave of mass shootings and the first federal gun control legislation in decades, Gabby Giffords on moving ahead on gun violence twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt92c94b7b103f879d/698a33a709208f29db419573/GettyImages-1408155686.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Gabby Giffords: The Big Lesson from Our Small Progress on Guns > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=2938c78e-3a04-4103-8968-a31c0962fc28&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Gabby Giffords' Road to Recovery [Watch (HLS stream): Gabby Giffords' Road to Recovery](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rMdL61y4.m3u8) (4:21)  _Published 2022-07-18. In this short film from the directors of Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down, Gabby Giffords and her speech therapist Dr. Fabi Hirsch go through the progress she's made over the years._ by [Gabrielle Giffords](https://time.com/author/gabrielle-giffords/) ## Gabrielle Giffords Jul 14, 2022 3:35 PM UTC  (L-R) Filmmaker Betsy West, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and filmmaker Julie Cohen at the Washington, DC premiere of "Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down" on July 11, 2022 in Washington, DC. (L-R) Filmmaker Betsy West, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, and filmmaker Julie Cohen at the Washington, DC premiere of "Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down" on July 11, 2022 in Washington, DC. Shannon Finney-Getty Images by [Gabrielle Giffords](https://time.com/author/gabrielle-giffords/) ## Gabrielle Giffords Jul 14, 2022 3:35 PM UTC I often get asked about what could have been. If I hadn’t met with constituents at a Congress on Your Corner event on Jan. 8, 2011\. If I hadn’t been shot in the head, leading to partial paralysis, aphasia, and a decade-long journey to regain the ability to walk and talk. Would I now be a Senator, instead of my husband? What might have been? What I say in response, every single time, is: Move ahead. We can’t rewrite the past with our wishing or our wanting. But the future? Now, that’s something we can play a role in shaping. We’ve been living through two years of a pandemic and are now watching the Supreme Court overturn long-established precedent. And yet, while we are collectively processing and coming to terms, we must not discount the progress we have made on the seemingly intractable issue of gun-violence prevention. On June 25, President Biden signed into law the first major piece of [gun-safety legislation](https://time.com/6191385/biden-signs-gun-violence-bill/) in nearly 30 years: legislation that provides funding for lifesaving extreme-risk laws and community violence intervention programs; addresses deadly loopholes in domestic-violence laws; and enhances the background-check process for 18-to-20-year-olds purchasing long guns. The gun-safety movement accomplished this despite our bitterly divided and partisan nation. Fifteen Republican Senators stood up to the National Rifle Association and stood on the right side of history. No, this legislation isn’t perfect. But it’s undoubtedly true that compromise and bipartisanship are preferable to inaction—the status quo for so many years on this issue. --- ### More from TIME --- The job of a legislator, by its very nature, is incremental if you do it right. Ten years ago when I founded Giffords, a gun-violence-prevention group, we spent months trying to pass a similarly narrow but impactful piece of legislation. The bill failed. We kept going. The difference between then and now is the movement we’ve built. Millions of Americans refused to accept the status quo of gun violence being the [leading cause](https://time.com/6170864/cause-of-death-children-guns/) of death for children. Millions of Americans believed that something was possible. One of the lessons I’ve learned, in the more than 11 years since I was shot, is that real life is not as neat and tidy as our fantasy of it. But it’s a hell of a lot more worth living than an unrealistic dream. Whether we’re talking about legislation or the state of our country, nothing is ever everything we wanted. We compromise and negotiate. We make the best of difficult situations. We grit our teeth and we move ahead, as so many Americans do each and every day, trying to make the best of this imperfect nation. _Giffords is the subject of_ [_Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down_](https://time.com/studios/project/gabby-giffords-wont-back-down)_, a documentary presented in association with TIME Studios, which opens in theaters on July 13_ ## Transcript The sun will come out tomorrow. So you gotta hang on till tomorrow. Come what may! I love that I love it in therapy, you will just burst into song. And again, it's the doing things that just give you joy are so important when there's so much that's just hard, repetitive work. So we've been working together for about eight years, and... Eight years... fly by! It has flown by. Aphasia really sucks. The words are there in my brain. I just can't get them out. I love to talk. I'm Gabby, and I'm so quiet now. So we meet three times a week. We work together to determine goals, to work on things that would bring you back to things that were so important before. So Gabby, I thought we would go through your questions for your interview again. Okay, see how they're coming along? Can you reflect on how far you've come since January 2011. I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk. Now. I'm giving speeches again. And I'm riding my bike for 25 miles in El Tour de Tucson. Beautifully done. So how did you get there to the 25? Twenty-- I don't know. It just got there. Okay. Well done, way to stick with it. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It was a big deal for Gabby to go back, give a speech in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was really a focus for us in therapy. First, just learning the speech going through line by line. And sometimes we have to break down to phrases, words, sometimes individual sounds that we have to practice. It, Ot Small words. Yeah. Oh it's a hard knock life. For us. It's hard knock life for us. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow but always a day away. I'm so busy. speech therapy, physical therapy. French horn. I'm riding my bike. I'm traveling again. Whoo hoo! Gabby's really made just remarkable gains. And it's been now over 10 years. And I am so proud of Gabby for putting herself out there so people can see that she continues to improve for other survivors, to see that with hard work, continued gains are possible and to just give people that, that determination that, that hope, that inspiration, I think is so important, and so kudos to you, Gabby. Pretty proud of yourself? Yes. I'm getting better. I'm getting better slowly. 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