Republican lawmakers ambushed by gunman

Congress was in shock this week after a fervent
opponent of President Trump opened fire
on Republican congressmen and their aides
as they practiced for an annual congressional
baseball game at a ball field in Alexandria,
Va. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and
four others were wounded before the gunman
was fatally shot by police. Suspect James
Hodgkinson, 66, a onetime home inspector
from Belleville, Ill., had volunteered for
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign
and belonged to several anti-GOP Facebook
groups, where he denounced President Trump as a “traitor.” Armed
with a rifle and a handgun, Hodgkinson allegedly unleashed a barrage
of at least 50 bullets, sending lawmakers and aides scrambling
for cover. Scalise, who was struck in the hip, crawled from second
base into the outfield, leaving “a blood trail about 10 to 15 yards
long,” said Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who used his belt to stanch
the congressman’s wound. Two members of Scalise’s Capitol Police
security detail exchanged gunfire with Hodgkinson, and continued
to fire after being wounded. If not for the officers, said Rep. Barry
Loudermilk (R-Ga.), “it would have been a carnage.”
Scalise underwent surgery and was reported to be in critical condition.
Also injured, but expected to recover, were a congressional
aide and a lobbyist, along with the two members of Scalise’s security
detail. President Trump hailed their courage in the face of a
“very, very brutal assault” and appealed for unity. “We do well,”
he said, “to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s
capital is here because, above all, they love our country.”

“Democrats, listen up,” said Cheryl Chumley
in The Washington Times. “Your all-courts
press to take down Donald Trump and the
Republican Party” has caused enough chaos.
“Cars have been burned, business storefront
windows smashed, people injured, and police
attacked.” I sincerely hope our political
atmosphere has not grown so poisoned that
left-wing nutcases think it’s acceptable to actually
shoot Republicans. “That would be the
end of the republic as we know it.”

Hodgkinson’s liberal politics “bear no blame for the shooting,”
said Timothy Carney in the Washington Examiner, “just as
pro-lifers bore no blame” when a madman went on a murderous
rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015. When people
carry out these shootings, the cause “is their own mental illness.”
Tell that to the conservatives who were quick to point fingers at
the “hate” fueled by the liberal media, said Charlie May in Salon
.com. It took depressingly little time for this tragedy to devolve into
a “partisan blame game.”

The attack was, by one count, America’s 195th mass shooting of
2017, said David Frum in TheAtlantic.com. Yet “Americans have
developed a strong taboo” against ever discussing why such rampages
occur with such frightening frequency. “Like ancient villagers,”
we accept gun massacres “as a visitation from the gods.” The
only permissible response is to offer “thoughts and prayers” for
victims, and move on. Why are mass shootings so rare in Canada
and Europe? “Who would be rude enough even to wonder?”