As the House Majority Whip—part of the leadership of the Republican party in the U.S. House of Representatives (the third highest-ranking Republican, in fact)—Steve Scalise has a round-the-clock Capitol Police detail. “Good guys with guns” are available to protect him every minute of his life.Yet when a gunman opened fire on a Congressional Republican baseball practice this morning, Congressman Scalise was among the wounded. Mo Brooks (R-SC) told the New York Times that Scalise was shot in the hip near second base and then tried to drag himself to the outfield to get away from the gunman.I can already see the divergent points-of-view on how this event will be interpreted.On the one hand, you’ll have people who support the anti-gun violence movement in this country who will point out that Scalise has an A+ rating from the NRA because of his “pro-gun” stance.I’m not just anti-gun violence, I’m anti-gun. It’s horrific to me that a bunch of people can’t get together at a park to play some baseball without being shot. I don’t know Scalise, and I haven’t checked his voting record on anything but gun issues, but I can’t imagine we agree on much. But one thing we can agree on, I suspect, is that he should be able to go play baseball with a bunch of his friends without being shot.However, I can’t help but wonder how pro-gun Scalise was as he dragged himself across the outfield of that park.The pro-gun segment of the population (those whom I call gun fetishists, perhaps unfairly, but I don’t really give a damn) are, no doubt, ready to use this is an example of how a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun.Rand Paul, a Senator from Kentucky, said on CNN that had the Capitol Police not returned fire it would have been a massacre. Then he said, “You are completely helpless. Having no self defense, and no way to get to somebody, the field was basically a killing field.”Brooks said, “It’s not easy to take when you see people around you being shot and you don’t have a weapon yourself.”Can you read the writing on the wall here?Those beholden to the ever-declining percentage of Americans who own guns, and the despicable, soulless hired guns who lobby on their behalf, are going to present this as an example of why we need to make it permissible to let everyone carry guns all the time.Let me remind you that those who cling to their guns and stroke them in loving ways that the rest of us usually reserve for living entities possessing a heartbeat, always claim that guns aren’t the problem. People are the problem. Mental illness is the problem.Which begs the question why House and Senate Republicans, along with Little Donny Trump, acted in February to repeal a measure that helped prevent mentally ill people from purchasing guns.If only every good guy had a gun. Damn, we’d be so safe! Perhaps we can begin attaching holsters to baseball gloves. That way, if some unsuspecting second baseman dives for a line drive up the middle, and is met by a barrage of bullets from lame-brained bad guy with a gun, he can just reach into his Rawlings, pull out his Smith and Wesson, and even up the score.Sounds great, doesn’t it? ‘Merica! That’s the sort of country I want to live in.Unfortunately, for Mo Brooks and Rand Paul, and the rest of their let-everyone-have-a-gun brethren—and super unfortunately for actual victims of gun violence, like Mr. Scalise—often it’s just too late.Scalise has round-the-clock protection from Capitol Police. Wednesday morning at a softball game is part of the clock, so I assume the Capitol Police were there. They must have been, Paul said they stopped a massacre. Yet even with plenty of good guys with a gun nearby, Brooks said more than 50 shots were fired.I’d like to think that having gun violence hit so close to home might cause Republicans to endorse sensible laws restricting gun ownership. I doubt that will happen though. Instead, they’ll continue the fallacy that to be truly safe everyone needs to own a gun.Which brings me back to the basic question that I always ask: Which of two worlds would be more safe, a world in which everyone owned a gun, or a world in which no one owned a gun?Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.
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