The federal government should require background checks for gun purchases anywhere in the country. The concept is overwhelming supported by Americans. So simple. So sensible. So fair. Yet, so far, impossible to get through Congress.

But that doesn’t mean give up.

A fund-raiser letter arrived at home this week from Americans for Responsible Solutions, the political action c

Gabby Giffords and husband Mark Kelly, right,
 at October 2103 gun show in Saratoga Springs.

ommittee created by Gabby Giffords, whose impressive, blossoming career in Congress was cut short by a mentally ill man who shot six people to death and injured more than a dozen others, including Giffords, the target of his rampage.

“Many may look at me and see mostly what I have lost,” began a letter in the mailing signed by Giffords. “I struggle to speak. My eyesight’s not great. My right arm and leg are paralyzed. And I left a job I loved representing southern Arizona in Congress.”

She briefly described the daily, painful, frustrating rehab that she must do every day and asked, “if simply completing a normal day requires so much work, how would I ever be able to fulfill a larger purpose?”

The answer, she wrote, came with the shooting of the schoolchildren in Sandy Hook: “After that day, my husband, Mark, and I pledged to make it our mission to change laws and reduce gun violence.”

Thus was born the Americans for Responsible Solutions, whose goals they have been tirelessly promoting around the country. Last October, the cause brought themto Saratoga Springs, where she and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman held apress conference at a gun show to urge that New York’s laws pertaining to background checks serve as a model for federal legislation.

The U.S. Senate failed to pass a background checks bill, and now the Americans for Responsible Solutions is focusing on supporting the election of candidates who will. This PAC is a little guy compared to the gun lobby, but why that lobby is against making it harder for criminals and the mentally ill to get guns is beyond me.

Besides the Giffords letter, the mailing included a letter from the organization’s executive director, Saratoga Springs’ own Pia Carusone, who had been Giffords’ chief of staff and is as passionate as her boss about this cause. The letter notes that any contribution to Americans for Responsible Solutions by March 31 will be matched by a donor, up to $500,000. I know the matching donation pitch is a well-worn fund-raising strategy, but it works.

If it’s piqued your interest as it did mine, the mailing address is P.O. Box 92560, Washington, DC 20090. Learn more at americansforresponsiblesolutions.org.