If young people 'show up to vote,' could have 'profound impact': Gabby Giffords' husband

Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut, gun-control advocate and husband of former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, said Sunday that if students who organized the March for Our Lives can mobilize young people to vote, they could swing the 2018 midterms.

Kelly told ABC News "This Week" Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday that he talked to the student organizers of the massive march for gun control on Saturday, "and they have a plan ... This is not the last you're going to see of these kids."

"They’re smart, they’re articulate," Kelly said. "They also realize that they need to motivate their peers to show up and vote."

Raddatz noted that part of the plan of March for Our Lives organizers is to register high school students to vote in this year's congressional midterms. "Do you think they could actually swing elections?" she asked.

Kelly responded, "Well, if they can get enough people registered to vote and then get them to show up to vote."

He said that historically only about one out of five, or 20 percent, of people around age 20 vote.

"If you can change that number to two out of five people, that would have a powerful impact," said Kelly, who with his wife became an advocate for gun control after Giffords, while serving as a Democratic congresswoman in Arizona, was shot in the head in 2011.

Kelly, a U.S. Navy captain, attended the March for Our Lives event in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. He said the students on stage didn't take a partisan stand.

“None of them on the stage said Democrat or Republican," he said. "I don't think it was said once. They realize that this needs to be a bipartisan approach to change.”