Steve Scalise says he’s still pro-Second Amendment despite being targeted for his political beliefs in a violent shooting. (Photo: Scalise)
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was all about the Second Amendment before he was shot last year. Today he’s still all about the right to keep and bear arms.
That’s what Scalise said on television during an interview with a “surprised” Whoopi Goldberg. She said he doesn’t “have an idea that there may be some more gun control that we need to work on with stuff like this.”
Scalise was one of many Republicans targeted at the 2017 Congressional baseball practice shooting. He told her that he’s gotten that question a lot since and that his stance remains unwavering.
“Three and a half months later I came back to Congress and got to get back to work again and I had people that would ask me, ‘You know so are your views different on gun control?'”
“I’ve got deep-rooted conservative beliefs but they’re rooted in what the fundamental foundation of this country is based on,” said Scalise.
“I mean, when the Constitution was written initially they didn’t have a protection for guns because our founders just thought it was an assumed right,” said Scalise. “Later they added it in the Bill of Rights as the Second Amendment [because] they felt very strongly that every American has the right to defend themselves.”
Rep. @SteveScalise explains why his views on gun control have not changed since he was shot last year: “I’ve got deep-rooted conservative beliefs, but they’re rooted in what the fundamental foundation of this country is based on.” https://t.co/f8u2wc159S pic.twitter.com/OHNwka2za3
— The View (@TheView) December 4, 2018
“There are bad people out there you know whether they have guns or knives or bombs, [and] there are a lot of laws on the books,” he continued. “If somebody goes and uses a gun to commit a crime they’ve broken a series of laws to get there … so let’s enforce the laws better.”
Scalise said that people need to treat violence as a health issue in addition to enforcing existing gun control.
See Also: Second Amendment Foundation: Scalise Shooting Result of Democrat Hate Speech
“There’s usually a common thread in a lot of these shooters that there are mental health issues,” said Scalise. “We just passed new laws, and they were very bipartisan so they didn’t get a lot of attention, but laws that help close a lot of those loopholes and coordinate a lot of the mental health problems in this country so that if somebody does have serious mental illness they’re going to be taken care of in a better way.”
He affirmed his position by citing the landmark Heller decision, which holds that people have a fundamental right to own guns for lawful purposes including self-defense.
“The Supreme Court, by the way, answered this question a few years ago,” said Scalise. “It was a 5-4 decision – which is concerning, it should’ve been a 9-0 decision – but the Supreme Court said very clearly that you can own a gun not just as a member of the military but also individually to protect yourself … that is the true meaning of the Second Amendment.”
The sub-human that shot you is probably just another communist democrat trying in IT’S own way to push “gun control” on the majority of law abiding citizens. Do the research please, I believe you will find as I did that those “mass shooters” are all communist democrats. And if the truth is known I feel that they were PAID by the Communist Democrat Party to commit these crimes against humanity. What these sub-human Communist Democrats are trying to do is disarm the CITIZENS so they institute COMMUNISM in MY nation. NEVER HAPPEN as long as I’m still alive!!!
Whoopi is just another know nothing ghetto troll , screw those dopey broads on the view too.
The key word in the 2nd Amendment is “Militia”. And you don’t need a Militia for self defense, or shooting rabbits. Definition: a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. Our army would never be able to defend our streets across the nation with an aggressive China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and etc. Any these could form a temporary alliance just to take out America.
You can’t expect a local police department to be there when you are being raped, robbed, or murdered. How could you expect all our towns would be defended by our Military. They would prioritized defense on the cities, but all else would be left unprotected to defend themselves. Review WWII. Where were the primary battles fought? With illegal immigrants passing our borders, our military and police can’t even protect the border and towns near the border. Can you imagine a invading professional army. Forget it!
Whoopi Goldberg , like always is full of crap. Says “I’m a gun owner”,, like she’s taking your side in an argument… LOL
Stupid Whoopie thinks that because guns used black powder and were loaded down the muzzle in the 1700s that modern arms that use case ammo are not “Arms” in the same sense now as they were in 1776.
Well, The Fourth Amendment says: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.
But since there was no digital media or computers in the 1700s, The info, data and photos on Whoopie’s computer are not Constitutionally protected today,,, WELL WHOOPIE, WHICH IS IT…?
old steve left out the part that the 2nd amendment was to defend our selves from people like him,the government
Correct, but I appreciate his response to her leading questions. He replied articulately in the face of her smirk and her smug, all-knowing demeanor!
It is quite frustrating to have the 2A constantly scrutinized, unlike any other Amendment. The founding fathers had all experienced a tyrannical government, they also were historians and looked back at Europe and how it had evolved. They realized for the citizens of a free country to remain free, they needed to be armed and that right had to be spelled out in the Constitution. They didn’t go to that extreme to make an Amendment solely because they were concerned about individuals self protection from evil. However, it satisfies both. Hopefully the patriots will never need to rise up against tyranny here at home. But each and every one of us could be faced with evil at any time. Evil has existed since the beginning of time, and will always be present.
The difference between now and when the founding fathers acted on this, it seems, something has created more mental health issues. I say it seems, because the MSM makes sure it is in our faces anytime there is a shooting, more media and faster than ever. Maybe on a % basis or per-capita, it isn’t any worse. But having a focus on this is the true action, not trying to take guns out of the picture, away from the mental health and evil. Evil will find a way to get a gun. However, if no gun is available, it would be a knife, a baseball bat, etc. Only the helpless unarmed law abiding victim would suffer without firearms.
To use the Left’s words the individuals right to own guns is settled law via supreme court decision. So lets stop all this militia talk. Also the weak argument that the founders used muskets and never envisioned modern weapons is silly. So if that is true then we should be able to take away all first amendment rights except for news papers and being a town crier.
I would like to bring up a point that the LEFT tries to make about muskets. At the time the American private citizen was one up on the military. They had even better rifles that the best army in the world at the time. The British used smooth bore rifles that through out the ball like a knuckle ball. you just were not sure exactly where the thing was going to go after 50 to 100 yards. The chances of hitting what you were aiming at became slim to none the farther out you went. The American farmers at the time had rifling in there guns. This made the American much more accurate that the British.
So trying to use history to argue that the American private citizen should not have anything even close to the military is bogus. Back in the day (at the writing of the 2A) they had better!!!!!
The use of rifles in the American War of Independence was less important than many believe. It was indeed the first conflict in which rifled small arms were employed by organized units, but the numbers were always very small.
Any rifle cost more than any smoothbore musket, and it took more time to train a man to use a rifle. Because each rifle was custom-made by hand, it needed ammunition (lead balls and powder charges) custom-sized to its bore, which had to be made by the rifleman himself. Standardizedseries manufacture to the close tolerances a rifle demanded was still generations in the future.
A rifle took far longer to load, and was more easily fouled by fewer repeat shots. Minimum performance for a musketman in the Continental Army was four rounds per minute; when rifles were introduced as issue items in the US Army (1803 and after), a rifleman was allowed one minute to reload.
Rifles of the 1770s did not mount a bayonet, which was a vital piece of equipage in the armies of the day. Any rifle unit was thus in grave peril after discharging a volley, if the musket-armed adversary made a bayonet charge. The very few rifle companies that did enlist were sometimes protected by detachments of light infantry armed with muskets.
General Washington himself did not place much confidence in riflemen. He also thought poorly of militia. He himself wanted “an army who would look the enemy in the face” – troops drilled and trained like the European armies of the time, disciplined to stand fast against bayonet assaults and not inclined to break ranks when opposing forces fired volleys.
Shows and small brained people like Whoopie are all part of the propaganda machine. Let’s keep informing those who cherish freedom of their real intentions.
Scalise did touch on one thing a lot of people just don’t elaborate on. Mental Health. The push of late has been to prove more people, gun owners in particular, as being somehow mentally defective just for owning a gun. People can just scream danger now and a gun owner loose his or her rights to even have a gun in their home and all of them confiscated until proven otherwise! People are even getting killed when law enforcement show up to confiscate them just because of some idiot saying their a danger! We must defend our Rights or soon we will have none!
I hate that show and loathe that “woman.”
Hi words are so true. A quote from Congressman Bishop, who was also there, sets another truth: “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. We were inside the backstop and if we didn’t have that cover by a brave person who stood up and took a shot themselves, we would not have gotten out of there and every one of us would have been hit — every single one of us.”