By CARL MARIO NUDI
Bradenton Herald
SARASOTA — Mark Kelly, retired NASA astronaut, Navy veteran and husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, spoke Monday about his efforts to control gun violence in America.
At the press conference before his highly inspirational talk Monday in the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series, Kelly said he and his wife decided to speak out after the mass killing incident in Newtown, Conn.
“This is not what we wanted to do,” said the former NASA astronaut, “but we had to — 20 first-graders were massacred.”
In December, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot 20 children and six educators dead.
Kelly and his wife were personally touched by gun violence in January 2011, when Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in the head while meeting with constituents in a supermarket parking lot.
