The US Senate has voted against new legislation to expand background checks for gun purchasers, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's hopes of gun control reform after the school shootings at Sandy Hook in December.

Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman who survived a mass shooting in her Arizona constituency, held a private meeting yesterday with families of the 26 victims of last month’s gun rampage at a school in Connecticut.

A US congressional aide who almost lost his life in the Arizona shooting rampage that wounded former representative Gabrielle Giffords has won a special election to fill her seat.

Body of man expelled by Buddhist retreat in Arizona discovered 7,000ft up mountain

The husband of Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who is standing down while she recovers after being shot in the head, has confirmed he will not run for his wife's seat this year.

Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Congresswoman who has emerged as a symbol of courage and endurance in the 12 months since she was shot in the head while meeting her constituents outside a supermarket in Tucson, surprised her supporters yesterday by announcing that she is giving up her seat.

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She came, she smiled and she was greeted by tearful colleagues. But the glow of Gabrielle Giffords' unexpected appearance on Capitol Hill on Monday to vote for the debt-ceiling deal was quickly tempered by her frustration with the mess Congress had created over tax-and-spend policies in her absence.

It has been a remarkable recovery. In January the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head at an open-air meeting with constituents in Tucson, Arizona. Five months later, two photographs of her show how far she has progressed.

Five months after US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords nearly died after being shot in the head by a gunman whose bullets killed six others, the first pictures of her released since the massacre show the smile of a woman recovering remarkably well.

The army reject accused of a shooting spree that left six people dead and a US congresswoman critically injured has been declared unfit to stand trial. Jared Loughner, 21, was ruled by US District Judge Larry Burns to be mentally incompetent to stand trial and has been sent to a secure unit for treatment and assessment.

Doctors were due yesterday to replace a piece of Gabrielle Giffords' skull with a plastic implant, another encouraging step in the Arizona congresswoman's recovery from a gunshot to the head more than four months ago.

Loud, proud, and to the applause of vast crowds who had gathered to cheer her into orbit, the space shuttle Endeavour has successfully blasted into the skies above Florida at the start of what will be her final mission.

Welcome to Arizona; please shoot carefully. And if you really want to blend in with God-fearing locals, you may also want to be in possession of a cowboy hat, a sunburned neck, and at least one revolver, tucked into the waistband of your denim trousers.