Alexandria Attack Survivor Steve Scalise: Being Armed 'Part of the Fabric of Our Nation'

During the October 17 airing of Fox & Friends, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said having firearms and being armed is “part of the fabric of our nation.”

He made this statement in response to a question about where he stood on the Second Amendment considering the fact that he was shot and badly wounded during the June 14 Alexandria attack.

Scalise said, “Look, our Second Amendment rights are critical to what our Founding Fathers envisioned. If you go and look at the writings of our Founding Fathers, they believed strongly in rights of people to arm themselves for self-defense and that’s something that’s still strong today.” He admitted that we see “threats” against the right to self-defense and suggested people “tone down rhetoric.”

He added, “This is part of our Constitution and our country. Go read what Thomas Jefferson wrote; what John Adams wrote about the importance of people having firearms to protect themselves. It’s part of who we are and part of the fabric of our nation.”

On October 8 Breitbart News reported that Scalise reacted to the post-Las Vegas gun control push by warning that Democrats were using the event to create a “slippery slope” for more and more gun control laws. He countered the Democrat gun control push by stressing the fact that Second Amendment rights are not under the government’s purview, not up for a majority vote.

Scalise told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, “The Second Amendment really predates the Bill of Rights. Our Founding Fathers believed strongly in gun rights for citizens. Frankly they thought it was an assumed right; they didn’t put it in the Constitution because they didn’t think it would ever be in jeopardy.”

Scalise explained that the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution because enough of the Founding Fathers were convinced gun rights could be endangered by a centralized government.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.