The former representative Gabby Giffords (Democrat by Arizona) and former senator Jeff Flake (Republican for Arizona) requested the end of political violence in an opinion article published in Use Today After the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“There are calls to a war against progressive institutions and donors, and other terrifying forms of collective punishment against the president’s critics,” said Giffords and Flake in the opinion article.
“Meanwhile, there are people from the left who celebrate the tragedy as an act of distorted political justice. The political violence of any kind, perpetrated by government agents or by extremists, is a betrayal of our foundational principles,” they wrote.
Ultraconservatives call the war for the death of Charlie Kirk
Giffords, whose husband is Arizona’s Democratic senator, Mark Kelly, was shot in the head a meeting with his voters in 2011.
The man who shot him and killed six other people had an extensive history of mental illnesses.
“If the Americans let us drag this path of violence and reprisals, we will lose our country,” said Flake and Giffords in their article.
“We will abandon the search for a more perfect union and fall into a terrifying era where neighbors are suspicious, strangers are enemies and political opponents are threats that must be neutralized,” they added.
