WASHINGTON — In the year since House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others were shot at a congressional baseball practice, mass shootings have occurred at a Texas church, a Las Vegas music festival and high schools in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas.
Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a doctor who helped save Scalise’s life last June, has watched those attacks unfold with the acute sensitivity of a mass shooting survivor. Each shooting is jarring, says Wenstrup — he calls the Parkland shooting in particular sickening — but his views on gun control have not changed.
“If not for a gun — two guns really — being used on our side” by two Capitol Police officers at the GOP practice, “you might have seen 20 dead people,” Wenstrup says. “That tells you where I’m coming from.”
That sentiment is widespread among Republicans, who say the attack has only strengthened their commitment to protecting gun rights. The attack one year ago gives special weight to the annual game Thursday night at Nationals Park, where Republicans and Democrats are gathering for the competition that dates to 1909.
Rep. Roger Williams of Texas, who is coaching the Republican team, said he personally asked President Donald Trump to attend the game, and Trump replied that he’d be there. Williams said he didn’t know if Trump was actually attending, and the White House wasn’t saying late Wednesday.
Scalise, of Louisiana, suffered life-threatening injuries in the June 2017 shooting but returned to work last fall. He said the shooting “deepened my appreciation for the Second Amendment because it was people with guns who saved my life and every other member out there.”
If Capitol Police officers David Bailey and Crystal Griner had not been there with guns to counter
