Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords attends a 2013 news conference outside a Safeway grocery store in Tucson, Ariz., where supporters asked Congress to provide stricter gun control in the U.S. | Getty Obama discusses gun control with Giffords The meeting with former Democratic congresswoman and victim of gun violence had been planned ahead of this week's shooting in San Bernardino, California.

President Barack Obama held an unannounced meeting with gun control advocates former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, on Friday and discussed his administration's "ongoing effort to address gun violence in America," according to a White House statement.

The meeting, which did not appear on the president's public schedule, had been planned in advance of the shooting attack Wednesday in San Bernardino that left 14 people dead. Still, the White House sought to use the meeting to demonstrate the president's commitment to gun control, posting a picture of Obama and Giffords speaking in the Oval Office to Twitter.


The White House meeting also included senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is overseeing the process of drafting possible executive actions to prevent gun violence -- a topic that came up during the discussion, according to the official readout.

Giffords, a Democrat, was shot in the head by gunman Jared Loughner during an event in her Tucson-based district in 2011, and survived a traumatic brain injury. The massacre left six others dead, including one of Giffords’ congressional aides.

Giffords and Kelly, a retired astronaut, founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun-violence prevention group, in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2013.

White House officials told POLITICO on Thursday that a meeting of gun control advocates would be held at the White House on Friday. While many such activists are invited to the White House for a holiday reception later in the day, there was no policy-related meeting of the broader coalition with Obama beyond Giffords and Kelly.

Advocates including Giffords have pressed Obama to take new executive actions to tighten curbs on gun sales, in particular a move to require some small-scale gun sellers to get a dealers license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and conduct more background checks.

