Two things are dominating the gun debate right now: Mass murder and the latest assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
In theory, these two things could be said to have absolutely nothing to do with one another. While Apalachee High School was awful, the only thing that incident had in common with the attempt on Trump’s life was that both individuals had guns.
But there’s a place where these two coincide, and that’s looking at the shooting at a Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia.
While no one lost their lives that day, Rep. Steve Scalise almost did. The attack was politically motivated, no matter what some try to claim, and it could easily have taken the lives of a number of Republican lawmakers.
And despite that, it seems Congress doesn’t have a plan for the worst happening.
Over the past 15 years, members of Congress have survived two near-deadly shootings, a train crash with dozens of them on board, and a Capitol riot that had hundreds of lawmakers fearing for their lives.
Despite those incidents, the institution is wholly unprepared for a catastrophic event that kills or incapacitates multiple members — even if that hypothetical tragedy results in a major power shift: changing which party holds the majority in the House or Senate.
Members of Congress themselves have proposed a host of solutions to the havoc a mass casualty could wreak. Those propositions range from a constitutional amendment allowing members to designate their own successors to simple rule changes to prevent violence from shifting party power. But a POLITICO review shows that both Republican and Democratic leaders, including chairs of key committees, have failed to significantly advance any of the ideas proposed since a mass shooting at a GOP baseball practice in 2017. That’s largely based on a reluctance to acknowledge the issue and a general resistance in Congress to changing rules.
That strikes many members as foolhardy.
“The number of rounds in one pistol clip can change the balance of power of the House or the Senate,” said former Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who took up the issue after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when a hijacked plane came within 20 minutes of crashing into the Capitol. […]
— Read More: bearingarms.com
