Steve Scalise Defiantly Defends 2nd Amendment, Attacks Lawmakers
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House Majority Whip Steve Scalise knows firsthand what can happen when a firearm ends up in evil hands. After a crazed gunman decided to take out his leftist-rage on unsuspecting congressmen in June last year, Scalise nearly lost his life.
Reportedly angry with President Donald Trump and Republicans in general, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson exacted his revenge on innocent Republican congressmen, opening fire while the group practiced for the Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia, Chicago Tribune reported.
After Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip, the bullet “broke bones, tore up internal organs and cause(d) major internal bleeding,” and left him in critical condition, The New York Times reported. After months of recovery and several surgeries, Scalise returned to his position on Capitol Hill in September.
So has Scalise wavered on Americans’ Second Amendment right since his traumatic ordeal? Hardly.
In the wake of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, Scalise revealed his unfaltering position on the issue during an interview with Fox News.
Rather than wrongly target the NRA and law-abiding American gun owners as so many other politicians have done, Scalise called on his fellow lawmakers to focus on problems in mental health care and pointed out the failures in local, state and federal law enforcement that must be rectified.
“(W)e’ve seen so many breakdowns in different levels of government — federal, of course, with the FBI completely dropping the ball months ago when they had this kid handed to them on a silver platter,” Scalise told Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade.
“At the local level, we’re finding out more and more disturbing information about the local sheriff’s deputies, at least one, maybe more that were on site, armed to protect those kids, who stayed outside instead of going in and confronting the shooter.”
Scalise also knows better than most how guns in the hands of capable, trained men and women can be life-saving.
Capitol Hill police who were at the baseball field on that fateful day in Virginia willingly risked their lives to confront Hodgkinson, saving Scalise and many others.
“The fact that you had two armed police officers there who confronted the shooter immediately, saved not only my life but all the other members of Congress at that ball field,” Scalise recalled.
“Let’s focus more on addressing these problems in mental health that we’ve started to deal with in Congress,” Scalise concluded. “Let’s close loopholes, let’s figure out what went wrong with government before people start talking about taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Watch his interview on Fox below:
We need more leaders like Scalise who won’t allow the left to gloss over the clear-as-day failures in government that could have prevented atrocities like the Parkland shooting, and others.
Only three months ago, members of a Texas church were massacred after a clerical error within the government allowed the shooter to buy guns even though he should have been barred from purchasing them. And who stopped that murderer? Stephen Willeford — an NRA member with an AR-15.
What we’re seeing here — in the attack on the NRA and law-abiding gun owners — is right out of the left’s playbook — to “never let a crisis go to waste.” Like Scalise, we must counter that narrative with the facts — that trained, qualified gun owners are the best protection we have from the threats of those who would do evil.
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