Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul revealed on Wednesday that the media largely ignored a key detail from the attempted mass murder of Republican lawmakers last year at a baseball field in Virginia.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Paul condemned the violent rhetoric of the political Left and the Democratic Party and warned that someone is going to end up getting killed if the inflammatory rhetoric doesn’t stop.
“I was there at the ball field when Steven Scalise almost died from a very, very angry violent man who was incited really by rhetoric on the left,” Paul said.
“And this hasn’t been reported enough, when he came on the field with a semi-automatic weapon firing probably close to 200 shots at us, shooting five people and almost killing Steve Scalise, he was yelling ‘this is for healthcare!” Paul said. “He also had a list of conservative legislators, Republicans, in his pocket that he was willing to kill.”
“So what happens is that when Democrats say ‘get up in their face,’ they need to realize that there are a lot of unstable people out there,” Paul continued. “There are people with anger issues, there are people who are prone to violence.”
More about the Congressional Baseball Shooting In 2017:
The practice had been underway for about half an hour when James Hodgkinson began firing. According to the Capitol Police, he was armed with an SKS rifle and a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun, both of which he had apparently purchased legally. It was unclear if Hodgkinson used the handgun during the shooting incident.
When Hodgkinson opened fire, two of the officers, David Bailey, and Crystal Griner, rushed onto the field to protect the congressmen and the other civilians. Hodgkinson hid behind the third base dugout as the third Capitol Police officer, Henry Cabrera, took aim at him from behind the first base dugout.
Several witnesses said their lives were saved by the presence of the Capitol Police, who were there because of Scalise’s position as the House Majority Whip. The Capitol Police immediately engaged Hodgkinson and kept him pinned down, preventing him from continuing to fire on the unarmed baseball players. Rep. Davis and Sen. Rand Paul separately said that if not for the presence of the officers, the incident “would have been a massacre