Patricia Maisch is relentless. And she is right.
“My criteria for if I’m having a good day, since Jan. 8, 2011, is, if nobody is shooting at me, how can it be a bad day?”
If her name sounds familiar, it’s because she’s the person who wrestled bullets away from the man who, moments before, had murdered six people and shot 13 more in front of a Tucson grocery store.
The shooter was trying to reload when people who had gathered to talk with U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords wrestled him to the ground. Pat got the magazine of ammunition away from him.
Since that day, her time and attention have been devoted to making people know about the avoidable tragedy of gun violence. She has joined with others moved to activism by their personal experience to speak up for the victims who have been killed or injured by gun violence, and those who have had their loved ones taken from them.
Ninety-one people are killed with a gun every day in the United States. People wanting to minimize the tragedy or who try to deflect attention away from the role guns play in these deaths will often point out that two-thirds of those deaths are suicides — as if death at one’s own hand lessens the horror.
We were talking earlier this week about her latest push to bring attention to the pervasive problem of gun violence, and the more intransigent problem of getting Congress to do anything that would make it more difficult for people who are dangerous — to themselves or others — to easily and quickly buy a gun.
The “Concert Across America to End Gun Violence” is an effort both to remember the thousands of people killed with a firearm each year and to build momentum to improve public safety by changing gun laws.
It’s an uphill climb, yes, but we can’t give up.
Nine years ago, Congress designated Sept. 25 as “National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims.” This year the day will be marked across the country with more than 350 concerts in plazas, parks, restaurants, houses of worship, town squares, schools and music halls.
Tucson’s part will be an all-day concert at Monterey Court Studio Galleries and Café. Local musicians will play from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and there will be food, free gun locks, a voter-registration drive and more.
Organizers are asking for a $3 donation, which will go to Christina-Taylor Green Park Improvement Fund, the Gabriel Zimmerman Scholarship Fund at ASU, and the Tucson January 8 Permanent Memorial Fund.
Pat and I talked about the difference between knowing something is a problem and taking action.
“It takes somebody being personally impacted,” she said. “After Columbine, I said, ‘That’s horrible, someone should do something.’ After Virginia Tech, I said, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing something?’
“It took me seeing six people dead on the ground to realize, ‘It’s supposed to be you — you’re supposed to be helping.’”
She is helping. She travels to Washington to lobby Congress. She speaks publicly about how every person buying a gun should have to pass a background check.
She points out the ridiculousness that federal law doesn’t require a private seller — someone selling at a gun show, out of the trunk of their car or over the internet — to check if the buyer is a felon or has a history of domestic violence or has been committed for serious mental illness.
Pat speaks with the authority of someone who has been there, who has seen bloodied bodies on the ground around her. She’s cried with the family members and friends of those who have been killed.
“When I see people whose children have been taken,” she said, “and I see them lift their head up off the pillow every day — if they can do that, then I can do this.”
