METAIRIE, LA (WGNO) — Moments after the bullet hit him– seconds after he says his arms could no longer support him as he tried to crawl away– Congressman Steve Scalise heard a comforting sound.
It was the sound of more gunfire, from a different caliber weapon– the kind carried by his own security detail. They were firing back at the gunman.
As the House Majority Whip, Scalise is one of the top leaders in Congress who can count on armed bodyguards for protection. Scalise credits his security team with saving his life in June, by killing the gunman who attacked him at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia.
That’s one reason Scalise says he’s against any kind of new legislation that would limit a person’s ability to carry a gun.
In an interview with WGNO-TV, conducted just one day before the Las Vegas mass shooting that left 59 people dead, Scalise insisted that “every day in this country, people use guns to actually defend themselves against criminals, and those stories don’t get told.”
However, according to the “Violence Policy Center,” vpc.org, a non-profit research group based in Washington, DC, the use of a gun in self-defense is “extremely rare.” In fact, the Center claims that “more guns are stolen each year than are used in self-defense.”
