Jan. 8 victims reflect in video by gun control group

Updated Jan 6, 2012, 3:08 pm

Dylan Smith
TucsonSentinel.com

Mavy Stoddard speaks in a video by Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Some Jan. 8 shooting victims and witnesses appear in a video by a national gun control group released Wednesday.

Retired Col. Bill Badger, Ken Dorushka, Randy Gardner, Mavy Stoddard, Roger and Faith Salzgeber, and nurse Nancy Bowman lent their voices to a 3-minute video by Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

The group is calling for more stingent background checks for purchasers of firearms with its "Fix Gun Checks" campaign.

In the video, the Tucsonans briefly describe their experiences on that Saturday morning a year ago.

Six people were killed and 13 others wounded in the shooting, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The incident occurred at a "Congress On Your Corner" meet-and-greet held by the congresswoman.

"It's something that haunts everyone that was there — not only us victims of this tragedy, but all the people who were affected," said Ken Dorushka, who was shot in the incident.

"There's is nothing in my career that prepared me for that. That was more like a war zone," said Bowman, who was shopping at the Safeway when the shooting occurred. A nurse, she helped treat the victims - including 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green — along with her husband, a doctor.

"You get up and you make a life," said Mavy Stoddard, a shooting victim whose husband Dorwan was killed Jan. 8.

"I'm going to work for this cause, to hopefully keep other people from having to go through the horror we went through," she said in the video.