House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke Thursday evening on Fox about the tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida and his problems with the Democrats’ immediate push for gun control in response to the shooting. Scalise, himself the victim of a shooting in June, also emphasized the importance of prayer in reponse to such tragedies, saying prayer helped him and his family when he was fighting for his life in the hospital last year.
“Any time there is any kind of tragedy, either shooting or bombing whatever, immediately you've got a group of legislators that go run out and start calling for gun control to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens,” Scalise told Fox’s Laura Ingraham. “Look at their bills, read their bills, they have nothing to do with these kinds of shootings.”
REP. SCALISE: One magic law won’t stop shootings (via #IngrahamAngle) pic.twitter.com/WKaKUJNB1J
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) February 16, 2018
“If you think there’s some magic, unicorn law that’s going to stop it from happening, just keep in mind that he violated probably dozens of laws already, including murdering people,” he said. “That's against the law."
“So, you know, this idea that one magic law is going to stop the next one from happening, it’s not,” Scalise emphasized.
Scalise nearly died after being shot at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game last year. He spent over a month in and out of intensive care but miraculously recovered and received a standing ovation when he returned to work on the floor of the House.
He emphasized the importance of prayer to his own recovery and called for prayers for the victims and their families.
“The prayers helped me tremendously,” he said. “And unfortunately, there are some on the Left who actually mock praying for people. I needed those prayers. Those prayers helped me and my family at a really difficult time, and you could feel them. These families need prayer, they need counseling, they need help.”
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In addition to prayers, Scalise called for an investigation of the missed warning signs in this case.
“There were so many things that slipped through the cracks,” he said. “The telltale signs were there. And when every kid in the school says, 'Jeez, I mean this kid was the one that we knew would be a shooter.' Why didn't anybody else know about that? These are the problems we need to address.”
Scalise also pointed out that in these shootings there is a common thread of mental illness and gun-free zones.
“What you do see in common, number one, you see a lot of mental illness in common,” he said, “but you see gun-free zones. Shooters know that if you go to a gun-free zone you're the only one with the gun. Fortunately with me, I had two law enforcement agents that were with me that had guns that could counter the shooter. And ultimately that's what took him down, it was other people with guns that took down the shooter.”
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