Like many Americans, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly said he was stunned by the news of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting. In an interview with Katie Couric on Substack, he recalled that he was in a Senate meeting when he first heard — and it immediately brought him back to 2011, when his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head while meeting with constituents in Tucson.
Giffords survived, but suffered severe brain damage and continues to live with aphasia, a language disorder. “The initial phone call about Gabby… I thought, well, maybe she’s just mildly injured.” He added that Kirk’s shooting was especially upsetting for Giffords, who has spent more than a decade advocating to prevent similar acts of violence.
As he processed the latest tragedy and saw footage of the shooting, Kelly said the reality hit him that Kirk had not made it out alive. “I thought immediately about his wife and the phone call she was receiving — how devastating that must have been,” he said. “She’s got two kids. I have a grandkid the same age. My oldest daughter, Claudia, is the same age as Charlie Kirk.”
The reaction to Kirk’s death spanned the political spectrum — a mix of grief and condemnation of violence, with the right remembering him as a conservative icon and some on the left acknowledging the tragedy while pointing to his history of inflammatory rhetoric. “Democrats and Republicans are trying to figure out the next steps here to try to get the temperature turned down and try to get us back on the right track, because there’s a lot at risk here,” he emphasized.
For Kelly, the loss underscored the fragile line between healthy debate and unacceptable violence. “It’s good for our democracy to have differing views and open debate,” he told Katie. “But what happened here is, to me, un-American — someone showing up with a gun to shoot and murder someone. It’s a despicable act, and we all have to stand up against it.”
Other politicians are placing blame, like Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who argued that Democrats and the media were “culpable” for Kirk’s death. Kelly rejected that framing, saying, “History’s not going to judge those people well,” and added that he hopes the tragedy brings more urgency to the push for gun reform.
“It’s unfortunate that it often takes a national event to spark action,” he said, noting that Giffords has helped pass more than 700 pieces of gun safety legislation at the state level. “We need to do more federally. Gun laws matter. And right now, we have the weakest gun laws in the developed world — and the highest level of gun violence.”
You can hear more of Kelly’s reflections on Kirk’s assassination — and what it means for the country — in the interview below.
