2 years after being shot, Giffords takes on gun lobby

The debate over the nation's gun laws has escalated since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that left 26 children dead. Now, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords ? who was shot in the head in Arizona ? is launching a new effort to curb gun violence. But many Americans remain passionate about the Second Amendment. NBC's Ron Mott reports.

By Alastair Jamieson and Becky Bratu, NBC News

A national initiative aimed at curbing gun violence was launched by former US. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, on Tuesday -- the second anniversary of the shooting that killed six people and left her critically injured.

A new campaign website, Americans For Responsible Solutions, promised to ?launch a national dialogue and raise funds to counter influence of the gun lobby.?

The couple last week visited Newtown, Conn., where a gunman opened fire in an elementary school, killing 20 children and six adults in December. They also met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a gun control advocate.

?In response to a horrific series of shootings that has sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans, and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary - nothing at all,? the pair wrote in an editorial published Tuesday on their site and in USA Today.

Conn. politician apologizes after saying Giffords should 'stay out of my towns'

"Achieving reforms to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings will mean matching gun lobbyists in their reach and resources," they wrote in the column.

"This country is known for using its determination and ingenuity to solve problems, big and small. Wise policy has conquered disease, protected us from dangerous products and substances, and made transportation safer. But when it comes to protecting our communities from gun violence, we're not even trying? -- and for the worst of reasons."

Gun control advocates zero in on new? tactic

In an interview with ABC News, the couple said the visit to Newtown brought back a lot of memories of their own ordeal two years ago.

?And you hope that this kind of thing doesn?t happen again. But you know what? It does happen again,? Kelly said.

Officials marked the two-year anniversary of Giffords?s brush with death in Tucson on Tuesday. The city rang bells at 10:11 am local time, when Jared Loughner went on the shooting spree that killed 6 people and left 13 more injured, including the congresswoman.

Former Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez, who applied First Aid to his downed boss in 2011, told NBC affiliate KVOA of Tucson?that he is sick of gun violence. ?There?s no excuse for standing back and saying we?re not going to do anything this time,? Hernandez said. ?It?s been far too long, there have been far too many deaths.?

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Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said that she remains open to new state restrictions on guns, according to the Associated Press. Brewer has vetoed two gun bills in recent years that would have expanded the right to carry firearms in public.

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?It will be something that I?m sure will be addressed in the Legislature and my ears are all open, and I?m certainly anxious if there is a solution that we get it done,? Brewer said.

Kelly and Giffords said they are both gun owners and strongly support the Second Amendment, but they acknowledge the need to prevent guns from ending up in the ?wrong hands.?

The couple hope to work with politicians to take gun lobbyists head-on and engage the country in a discussion about preventing gun violence.

They also hope to establish a requirement for a comprehensive background check for the private sale of guns, and address the issue of the treatment of mentally ill people in the United States. Another issue they hope to tackle is that of high-capacity magazines.

"An extended magazine is used to kill people," Kelly, a veteran of Desert Stom, told ABC, "lots of people."

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/08/16411165-gabby-giffords-launches-group-to-counter-gun-lobby?lite

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Sudden, massive outburst in neighbor galaxy surprises astronomers

Jan. 7, 2013 ? The surprising discovery of a massive outburst in a neighboring galaxy is giving astronomers a tantalizing look at what likely is a powerful belch by a gorging black hole at the galaxy's center. The scientists were conducting a long-term study of molecules in galaxies, when one of the galaxies showed a dramatic change.

"The discovery was entirely serendipitous. Our observations were spread over a few years, and when we looked at them, we found that one galaxy had changed over that time from being placid and quiescent, to undergoing a hugely energetic outburst at the end," said Robert Minchin, of Arecibo Observatory, who presented the research.

The scientists were using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) 305-meter William E. Gordon Telescope at Arecibo for their study when they discovered the outburst in NGC 660, a spiral galaxy 44 million light-years distant in the constellation Pisces. The outburst was ten times brighter than the largest supernova, or exploding star. They reported their findings at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Long Beach, California.

After detecting the outburst, the team continued to observe NGC 660 with the Arecibo Telescope, and also sought to determine the cause of the outburst using an international network of telescopes to make a detailed image of the galaxy.

"High-resolution imaging is the key to understanding what's going on," said Emmanuel Momjian, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "We needed to know if the outburst came from a supernova in this galaxy or from the galaxy's core. We could only do that by harnessing the high-resolution imaging power we get by joining widely-separated radio telescopes together."

The astronomers used a network called the High Sensitivity Array (HSA), composed of the NSF's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a continent-wide system of ten radio telescopes ranging from Hawaii to the Virgin islands; the Arecibo Telescope; the NSF's 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia; and the 100-meter Effelsberg Radio Telescope of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

"By adding the large collecting area of the three big dishes to the VLBA, we got the images much more quickly. What we did with the HSA in less than half a day would have taken nearly nine days with the VLBA alone," Momjian said.

The resulting images were more complex than the scientists expected. They thought they would see either the ring of an expanding supernova or a jet of superfast material from the galaxy's core. Instead, they saw five sites of bright radio emission, one near the center of the galaxy and two on either side.

"The most likely explanation is that there are jets coming from the core, but they are precessing, or wobbling, and the hot spots we see are where the jets slammed into material near the galaxy's nucleus," said Chris Salter, of Areceibo Observatory. "To confirm this, we will continue to observe the galaxy with the HSA over the next few years," he added.

If the jet idea is correct, the outburst probably was caused by material pulled into the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The material would form a rapidly-spinning disk around the black hole before finally falling into it, and the disk would generate jets of particles blasting outward at nearly the speed of light.

Astronomers are carefully watching a gas cloud in our own Milky Way Galaxy that is expected to fall into our Galaxy's central black hole in the middle of this year.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Arecibo Observatory is operated by SRI International under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (AST-1100968), and in alliance with Ana G. Mendez-Universidad Metropolitana, and the Universities Space Research Association.

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