Giffords feared being shot at event

In his first interview since Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 18 others were shot on Jan. 8 at a public event in Tucson, Ariz., astronaut Mark Kelly said that his wife and he had discussed the possibility of violence against her at least 10 times before. 

“You know, she says, ‘Someday, I’m really worried that somebody is going to come up to me at one of these events with a gun,’ ” he told ABC News’s Diane Sawyer. 

The shooting spree, allegedly carried out by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, left six dead and 13 wounded, including Giffords, who was shot in the head and remains in serous condition. Loughner, the prime suspect, faces five federal charges for the attempted assassination of Giffords, murder and attempted murder.

Kelly said his wife had received a number of death threats in the past, “as a lot of members of Congress have.” Giffords, a third-term lawmaker, saw her office vandalized after the healthcare reform vote in March. The glass door to her district office in Tucson appeared to be smashed or shot.

Giffords continues to recover at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where her condition has been downgraded from critical to serious. Kelly said he is cautiously optimistic of her recovery and said that his wife was even able to give him a neck massage while resting in her hospital bed. 

Kelly said that he believed that his wife was dead for 20 minutes after hearing incorrect media reports while in transit to Arizona to be with Giffords after the shooting.

“To hear that she died is just — it’s devastating for me,” he said.

Debate has swirled over whether or not heated political rhetoric helped create the environment for the shootings. Kelly expressed hope that people would use his wife’s shooting “as an opportunity to make things better.”

“Maybe we could use this as an opportunity to make things better,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to just tone it down, try to get back to a better place, try to get to a place where we can just disagree, and get rid of the heated, angry rhetoric.”