On Thursday, two days before the 20th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords went to Minnesota to announce the creation of a gun safety advocacy group.

The group’s agenda is predictable: It will lobby for universal background checks and an extreme risk protection law, which would allow the temporary confiscation of guns from people believed to pose an imminent threat to themselves or others.

Its composition is not: The members are all gun owners.

The group, Minnesota Gun Owners for Safety, is the second of its kind from Ms. Giffords’s namesake organization, which she founded after the shooting that almost killed her. (The first, in Colorado, started in January.) Ms. Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, who is running for Senate in Arizona, own guns themselves and argue that gun ownership can coexist with significantly stricter gun laws.

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In an interview, conducted by email and lightly edited for length, Ms. Giffords discussed the new group and reflected on what has, and hasn’t, changed in the eight years since she was shot.