The Hill News

The husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was seriously wounded by a gunshot at a meet your congresswoman event, admitted that his wife previously told him she feared being shot at a similar event. 

In his first interview since Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 18 others were shot in Tucson on Jan. 8, astronaut Mark Kelly said that his wife and he had discussed the possibility of violence against her at least 10 times before.

"You know, she says, 'Someday, I'm really worried that somebody is going to come up to my at one of these events with a gun,'" he told ABC News's Diane Sawyer. 

The shooting spree, allegedly carried out by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, left six dead and 13 wounded, including Giffords. Loughner faces five federal charges for the attempted assass! ination of Giffords, murder and attempted murder.

Kelly said that Giffords had received a number of death threats in the past, "As a lot of members of Congress have." The third-term lawmaker also saw her office vandalized after the healthcare reform vote in March. The glass door to her district office in Tucson appeared to be smashed or shot.

Giffords continues to recover at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where her condition has been downgraded from critical to serious. Kelly said he is cautiously optimistic of her recovery and said that his wife was even able to give him a neck massage while resting in her hospital bed.

Debate has swirled over whether or not heated political rhetoric helped create the environment for the shootings. Kelly expressed hope that people would use his wife's shooting "as an opportunity to make things better."

"Maybe we could use this as an opportunity to make things better," he said. "M! aybe it's time to just tone it down, try to get back to a bett! er place , try to get to a place where we can just disagree, and get rid of the heated, angry rhetoric."