As Minnesota politicians and the press push for more gun control in the wake of the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband (and the shooting of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife), other political figures are talking up the need for more security, both from an institutional and individual standpoint.
Former congressman Rodney Davis has a unique perspective. As Politico reports, Davis has been "both a victim of political violence and a key player in overseeing the protection of elected officials." Politico's Ben Jacobs recently sat down with Davis to talk about his own response to being the target of an assassination attempt, and I think Davis has the right idea.
A survivor of the 2017 congressional baseball shooting where Majority Leader Steve Scalise was badly wounded — Davis was at home plate when the gunman opened fire from behind third base — the former Illinois congressman later became the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, which oversees security arrangements for members of the House of Representatives.
Davis, who now serves as a head of government affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, lost his 2022 primary after redistricting put him in the same district as his Donald Trump-endorsed Republican colleague, Mary Miller.
As a result of the congressional shooting — which happened precisely eight years to the day of Hortman’s death — the former Illinois congressman says he now carries a gun when he can “in order to fire back if somebody decides to come and kill me and my friends again.”
Honestly, that's the best thing that Davis can do to protect himself. No, carrying a gun doesn't guarantee that he'll be able to use it if he's the target of an assassination attempt or an act of violence unrelated to his public service, but at the very least it ups the odds of him being able to fight back and survive an encounter with a cold-blooded killer.
Davis told Politico he considers himself a "big believer in the Second Amendment,", but says he never exercised his right to carry before the shooting at baseball field in Alexandria, Virignia. Now, though he says he does carry whenever possible because he "never wanted to feel like I couldn’t fire back again."
That's not to say that Davis's only solution is carrying a gun. He also believes that politicians and pundits need to tone down some of their rhetoric; at least the kind that dehumanizes their political opponents.
We have to deal with the environment. I mean, you know, when you have a CEO of a company like United Healthcare assassinated in New York, you can’t have politicians like [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren saying, ‘You know, it’s a tragedy. But.’
There shouldn’t be this immediate reaction, ‘Oh, wait, I’m okay with this because I wear a red shirt,’ or ‘I’m okay with this because I wear a blue shirt.’ And that’s the message that I tried to send immediately after the baseball shooting when I got back to the Capitol that day. And the message was we have to stop villainizing everyone, Republicans or Democrats.
We have to do what we can as former elected officials or elected officials to be able to call that out, regardless if they’re on your team or not.
That's easier said than done, but Davis believes there's no other option, at least if we want to cool down the overheated political environment.
I'll admit that's sometimes hard to do, especially when gun control activists demonize and vilify gun owners every day. Turning the other cheek isn't easy when they insist that we care more about our guns than our children, that the only reason we support the Second Amendment is because we're mindless pawns of the firearms industry, and that our efforts to expand and secure a fundamental civil right are really about arming assassins and drug cartel members.
At the same time though, I don't believe that every gun control supporter is a commie who wants to disarm the American public so a tyrannical regime can rule over us all. I actually think most gun control supporters are simply ignorant of the ineffectiveness of things like gun bans, universal background checks, waiting periods, "gun-free zones", and other restrictions. Many of them are motivated by a personal loss, and I do understand the desire to make sense of a needless death or try to find some greater purpose in it, even if i I disagree vehemently with their "solutions."
As much as I support de-escalating our political and cultural environment, I also know that there are always going to be those who seek to burn bridges, not build them. I can try to walk with a heart full of love for humanity, but I'm still going to carry a gun on my side. I'm not looking for a fight, but that doesn't mean one won't find me.
So yes, let's deal with the political environment, but let's also recognize that we don't live in a perfect world. Whether we're talking about public officials or the general public, there are folks who want to do us harm, and we need to be prepared for that reality.
