AURORA — Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords told Colorado gun control supporters Monday night that fighting gun violence takes courage, but they must never end that fight.

“Be bold, be courageous. The nation is counting on you,” Giffords told a standing-room-only crowd of about 150 people during a town hall meeting in Aurora.

Giffords was shot and nearly assassinated in early 2011 during a constituent event in Arizona. To focus on a lengthy recovery, she retired from Congress the following year and has since become one of the nation’s leading advocates for gun control measures.

On Monday night, she hosted the town hall event with three Democratic members of Congress from Colorado — Reps. Jason Crow, Joe Neguse and Ed Perlmutter — as part of her advocacy work in the Centennial State. Attorney General Phil Weiser and several state lawmakers were also in attendance.

“The good news is, the tide is turning,” said Crow, who represents Aurora and ran for Congress on a gun control platform last year. “The majority of Americans are with us” on gun control.

Neguse recalled being 14 years old and living 10 miles away in Highlands Ranch when the Columbine High School shooting occurred in 1999. His niece was a student at STEM School Highlands Ranch, but uninjured during the shooting there this May.

“Twenty years later — 20 years! — nothing has gotten done,” Neguse said of Columbine.

Giffords’ gun control group, also called Giffords, has broadcast two television ads in Colorado this month, urging Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner to support gun control measures. But there was only one direct reference to the senator Monday night: a call from state Sen. Rhonda Fields “to retire that Cory guy.” The line drew applause from the largely Democratic audience.

There were also a few indirect references to the 2020 election. Perlmutter, of Arvada, said either the U.S. Senate and president will pass and sign gun control measures “or we’re going to change that Senate and we’re going to change that White House.”

Fields, a Democrat whose district includes Aurora, criticized active shooter drills in one unnamed school district for urging students to fight, saying, “How are you going to fight somebody with an AR-15?” The senator said she plans to introduce legislation standardizing school shooting drills.

The event lasted 90 minutes, and featured a panel of gun control advocates, including a Columbine teacher, the director of March for Our Lives Colorado, and Sandy Phillips, whose daughter was killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in that same shooting, was in the audience Monday night, sitting two rows behind Giffords.