A California Democrat, calling for new firearms laws, claimed to be the only House member to have been a victim of gun violence – apparently forgetting that Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was nearly shot to death by a Bernie Sanders-backing maniac in 2017.
The history-challenged claim by Rep. Jackie Speier referred to her brush with death more than 40 years ago in the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. While Speier was shot as she fled the compound where more than 900 people died in a mass murder-suicide, her claim to exclusivity was not accurate.
“I believe I’m the only member of this House that is a victim of gun violence,” Speier said Wednesday on the House floor. “My body is riddled with bullets. I have a divot in my leg that’s the size of a football. I have skin grafts on all parts of my body. I live with that every single day.”
Wasn't aware that Rep. Steve Scalise had left office. Someone on Rep. Speier's staff didn't do their homework. https://t.co/5tDbCoZxen
— Paul Ladd (@PaulLadd1) June 9, 2022
Speier, who was an aide to then-Rep. Leo Ryan (D-CA) — who was in Jonestown on a fact-finding mission and was killed — was calling for raising the age to buy AR-15-style rifles to 21, reported The Hill.
“I’m a victim of gun violence. I know what it does to a body, and I cannot believe that my colleagues don’t recognize that prohibiting the sale of an assault weapon until the age of 21 isn’t going to save lives,” she said.
Speier’s personal testimony was dramatic, but it left out Scalise’s near-death experience. The Louisiana lawmaker was grievously wounded in a mass shooting in 2017 as he and other Congressional Republicans were holding an early morning practice for the annual Congressional baseball game. Scalise sustained a gunshot wound to his hip that “traveled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding,” according to a press release from Scalise’s medical team.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was nearly killed by a gun-toting Bernie Sanders supporter in 2017. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Twitter users were quick to correct the record.
“Wasn’t aware that Rep. Steve Scalise had left office,” tweeted journalist Paul Ladd. “Someone on Rep. Speier‘s staff didn’t do their homework.”
“Jackie Speier was shot by radical democrats in 1978,” tweeted the user popcorn sutton. “Steve Scalise was shot by a radical democrat in 2017.”
Speier “only thinks what happened to her is important,” the Twitter account @Truth Wins wrote. “It’s a ‘Dem’ thing I guess.”
The House passed the Protecting Our Kids Act, which would raise the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain. The push for new gun control laws follows mass shootings in Buffalo, on May 14, where 10 people were killed, and at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school 10 days later, where 19 children and two teachers were killed. Both were carried out by 18-year-old males armed with semi-automatic rifles.