No cause of death was given, though she had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013.
McCarthy had one of the more stunning reasons to run for Congress. Her husband and son were shot in the 1993 Long Island Railroad shooting, in which a gunman boarded a Long Island Railroad train with a handgun, killing six people and injuring 19.
Her son survived with severe injuries that disabled him on one side of his body. Her husband died.
The shooting inspired McCarthy to run for Congress on a gun-control platform as a Democrat despite being a registered Republican. She would remain a Republican until 2003, well into her congressional term in Long Island’s Fourth Congressional District from 1997 to 2015.
Her congressional opponents often bashed
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