WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends to share his perspective as a shooting survivor on the Democrats’ proposed gun-control legislation. Whip Scalise was denied his request to deliver his testimony when the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on this legislation. He stressed that the Democrats’ bills would only prevent law-abiding citizens from accessing firearms for their self-defense and do nothing to address the true problems leading to mass shootings.
On the Democrats’ proposed legislation and the real life implications:
“First of all, they have two different gun control bills they’re bringing this week, already under speaker Pelosi’s new majority. One of the bills will make it very hard for you to loan a gun to a friend.
“For example, let’s say your neighbor has been beaten by her boyfriend. She has a temporary restraining order against him and she knows you have a gun. She says, ‘Can I just borrow the gun tonight? I think he’s going to come by and hurt me.’ If you do that you could actually go to federal prison for a year and have a $100,000 fine.
“Those are the kinds of things that are in this bill. It is dangerous. Anybody that has firearms that maybe has a friend who wants to borrow their gun to try it out to see if they’re going to buy one, you could go to federal prison for doing something that basic.”
On Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) decision to deny Whip Scalise the opportunity to testify at committee:
“…They didn’t want to hear all sides. They just wanted to hear the side of people who are promoting gun control. They didn’t want to hear the side of people, who like in my case, it was guns, people who used guns properly that saved my life and everybody else on that ball-field. It happens all the time in America where people actually use a gun to defend themselves. That is what the Founding Fathers intended. They believed it is not just the government’s right that tells you, you can have a gun, it is your own personal right to be able to protect yourself.”
On the current background check system in place and the real institutional failings that lead to mass shootings:
“If the neighbor knew that you had some kind of a problem getting the background check, he couldn’t make that transfer legally. There is already a system in place.
“If [Democrats] want to make the system work better, then there are ways that they can do it. In a lot of these cases with gun crimes, we find out it was federal agencies not doing their job. It was maybe local law enforcement not doing their job.
“In the Parkland shooting, the FBI had this kid’s name in a database where he said, ‘I am going to be a school shooter.’ They let him go. Who has been held accountable for that? Why didn’t they have a hearing with the FBI agents who touched that case and decided we’re going to let him go? Ultimately, he went and became a school shooter. We have to hold people accountable to do their job. Don’t put more laws on the books that make you felon if you loan your gun to your friend.”