To make change, survivors of gun violence need to be able to share their story.

That was the message Friday during an event in Denver held by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, who briefly spoke to survivors of gun violence.

“My recovery is daily,” said Giffords, 53. “I have not lost my voice.”

Giffords was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2011. She served in Congress for about five years.

Giffords, who was then representing Southern Arizona in Congress, was meeting with constituents in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson when Jared Lee Loughner shot her in the head, severely injuring her and killing six people – including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.

Giffords is married to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, the junior senator from Arizona.

Friday’s event at First Baptist Church of Denver was the inaugural stop in a free, skills-based training taught by victims of gun violence for victims of gun violence.

Among those who spoke was Sandy Phillips.

In 2012, she lost her daughter, Jessi Redfield Ghawi, when James Holmes entered a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora wearing tactical gear and killed 12 people.

“I feel that there’s a real sense of change in the air,” Phillips said.

Despite the strides in Colorado to reign in gun violence, Phillips said she would like to see an assault-weapons ban similar to the federal one that ended in 2004.

“I’m not saying, ‘Restrict, restrict, restrict,'” said Phillips, who is a life-long gun owner. “I’m saying, ‘Register, register, register.'”

The Aurora theater shooting was the second-deadliest mass shooting in Colorado behind the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, in which two shooters killed 12 students and a teacher.

The U.S. has had 492 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year – seven in Colorado – according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any incident with four or more victims.

That’s an average of nearly two shootings a day.

Mass shootings do not account for the majority of gun violence incidents.

Last year alone, more than 45,000 Americans were killed in a firearm-related death. That’s an average of 124 people a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The takeaways Friday were as different as the reasons people attended the training.

For Beka Venturella, whose cousin was murdered at Michigan State University in February, the event was about owning her story.

“Don’t feel like you have to fill the space when you’re talking with a survivor because you don’t,” Venturella said. “You just gotta be there.”

Venturella, who supports raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21, is running for Longmont City Council.

The new minimum age requirement is under litigation, and, recently, a federal judge on Monday granted the request of two Colorado residents to block the new law while the case unfolds, agreeing that the plaintiffs had shown a likelihood that they would prevail on their underlying claims.

For Ruth Glenn, a domestic abuse survivor, the event was a rare opportunity to hear and support the stories of other survivors of gun violence.

“It’s a horrible club that we’re a part of,” Glenn said. “But it’s also a wonderful club we’re a part of because everyone in their own way is working to end gun violence.”