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Senior Editor
Almost by reflex following the Alexandria baseball field shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise and three other people by a supporter of Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, anti-gun Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe complained about “too many guns on the street” in response to a reporter’s question at the first press briefing.
The Second Amendment Foundation asserted that the shooting was the product of Democrat hate speech that has been occurring since Donald Trump was elected president in November.
And the Daily Mail referred to slain gunman James Hodgkinson of Illinois as a “Trump-hating Bernie Sanders supporter.”
“When liberal leftists support the assassination of President Trump on stage what do you expect to happen,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb stated. “Hate speech and actions incite this kind of violence. It is time for Democrats like Reps. Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton and many of the talking heads at CNN and MSNBC to shut up.”
The dead gunman was a volunteer for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Sanders, the Socialist who ran as a Democrat against Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries. It was revealed that former officials with the Democratic National Committee had unduly tried to help Clinton in her campaign against Sanders. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out.
Hodgkinson was fatally wounded in an exchange of gunfire with local and Capitol police. He wounded Scalise, the House Majority Whip, along with a congressional aide and two Capitol police officers. Prior to opening fire, he reportedly approached some people and asked whether Republicans or Democrats were on the baseball field at the time, practicing for the annual charity baseball game, which will be held Thursday evening.
Sanders confirmed that Hodgkinson was a campaign volunteer, but he denounced the shooting in a statement on the Senate floor. Perhaps not surprisingly, media coverage seemed to only occasionally mention that Hodgkinson was a far-Left liberal activist. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was doing a speedy trace of the firearms recovered at the scene. The gunman was reportedly armed with a semi-auto rifle and handgun.
McAuliffe, responding to the shooting, told reporters that “there are too many guns on the street.”
He repeated, until challenged by one reporter, that “we lose 93 million” Americans every day, but finally amended that to “93 Americans.”
But it was not guns that Gottlieb and others pointed to as the real culprit.
According to The Week, Congressman Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican, told NBC News that it appeared “the gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible.”
Congressman Mike Bishop of Michigan, who was at the baseball field, told a reporter, “The only reason why any of us walked out of this thing, by the grace of God, one of the folks here had a weapon to fire back and give us a moment to find cover.”
Gottlieb focused on that in a statement to the press.
“Congressman Scalise and others at the field this morning were lucky to have the protection of courageous Capitol police officers, the good guys with guns who took down a bad guy with a gun,” he observed. “But what if they hadn’t been present?
“Maybe now the anti-gun rights Democrats will support everyone’s right to carry a firearm for self-defense,” Gottlieb said. “We are the first line of defense when it comes to personal protection from crazed individuals.”
The Washington Examiner reported that Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) said Congress should consider allowing members who are licensed to carry in their home states should be able to carry in Washington, D.C. There is legislation currently in Congress – but apparently gathering dust in committee – that would require states to recognize carry permits and licenses from all other states. It is called the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.
Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were reportedly rushing a trace on two guns recovered at the crime scene that the would-be killer was apparentlyn carrying. One was a rifle and the other a handgun.
