Report: Giffords, Kelly to attend Obama’s State of the Union address

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly will attend President Obama’s State of the Union address as guests of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), a Barber aide told CBS News.

{mosads}Barber was the district director for Giffords and was wounded in the mass shooting in 2011 that killed six people and seriously injured the former congresswoman.

While economy will remain the focus of Tuesday night’s speech, the president is also expected to give due weight to other priorities such gun control.

Last month, Giffords implored Congress to act on gun legislation.

“Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important,” Giffords said in halting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something.”

Kelly, a retired Navy Captain and astronaut who accompanied his wife, gave his own testimony.

Kelly told the panel that both he and Giffords are gun owners and hunters who have no intention of giving up their Second Amendment rights. But some new controls, he argued, would make the country safer without eroding those rights.

“Gabby would never relinquish her gun, and I would never relinquish mine,” Kelly said at Congress’s first hearing on gun violence since the shooting of Giffords. “But rights demand responsibility, and this right does not extend to terrorists. It does not extend to criminals. It does not extend to the mentally ill.

The Judiciary Committee hearing came weeks after Obama offered a package of gun control proposals in response to the killings by a lone gunman of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.