Scalise Urges Support for Goodlatte-McCaul Immigration Bill, Reflects on Personal Experience Enduring Shooting Attack on The Ingraham Angle

WASHINGTON, D.C.— House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel's The Ingraham Angle last night to discuss his efforts to whip support in the House for the Goodlatte-McCaul immigration bill. In light of this week's tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Whip Scalise also reflected on his own experiences of being a target of a shooting attack.

Click here to watch the full interview.

On the left's mocking of the power of prayer in times of tragedy:

"It’s disgraceful. Anytime there is any kind of tragedy, I mean a shooting, a bombing, whatever, immediately you have a group of legislators that run out and start calling for gun control to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens. They don't know the fact of that particular event. Again, look at their bills, read their bills, they have nothing to do with these kinds of shootings. What I first think we need to do is pray for the people that died and there were unfortunately too many people who died, but the families too and all of these kids, Laura. There were a lot of kids that witnessed this that are going to have this with them the rest of their lives. The prayers helped me tremendously and unfortunately there are some on the left who mock praying for people...I needed those prayers. Those prayers helped me and my family through a really difficult time and you can feel it. These families need prayer, they need counseling, they need help. Let's go find out the root of these problems. We are already seeing there were so many things that slipped through the cracks. The telltale signs were there. Every kid in the school says, ‘This kid was the one that we knew would be a shooter.’ Why didn't anybody else know about that? These are the problems we need to address."

On the left using tragedies to press their gun control agenda:

"You go find your law that was going to prevent this or the next shooting. First of all, whatever criminal did these actions violated a whole host of other laws too. if you think there's some magic unicorn law that's going to stop it from happening, just keep in mind that he violated probably dozens of laws already including murdering people; it's against the law. This idea that one magic law is going to stop the next one from happening, it's not. What you do see in common, number one you see a lot of mental illness, but you also see gun free zones. Shooters know that if you go to a gun free zone, you're the only one with the gun. Fortunately, with me, I had two law enforcement agents that were with me that had guns that could counter the shooter. Ultimately, that's what took him down. It was other people with guns that took down the shooter. Every day in America there are people who use guns to stop crimes, to defend their own families. That's what our founding fathers wrote about, by the way. They believed in an innate right of people to have guns for self-defense. These people who want to take away your rights, guised under all of these tragedies, go pray for the families, care about these families, don't try to promote your agenda in the middle of a tragedy."

On his own experience with being a target of a shooting attack:

"I really don't [have any post traumatic stress]. I’ve talked through this with my security detail, with my colleagues that were out there on the field. With what this guy intended, if there weren't other people with guns out there to stop the shooter, there would've been 15 members of Congress executed that day and there weren't, luckily, by the grace of God. There were true miracles that happened on that field. I saw it. I experienced some of those, so I don't focus on the negative. I saw so much good in people. I saw millions of people praying for me that I had never met before."

...

"[Prayer] mattered. My own community, obviously family, friends, that mattered so much. But then just the kindness of strangers and I saw it in so many different ways. Bono, did a U2 a concert. I’m a big U2 fan. He prayed for me before his concert...He prayed and it really did matter. The power of prayer is real. I got to see so much of the goodness of people. I’m still working through going to physical therapy three days a week. I don't have constant pain. I have issues that I’m still working through. Obviously, the nerve damage, especially on my left side where the bullet entered. I’m trying to learn how to walk again without crutches. I want to compete for my job again at second base; I was the starting second baseman...I want to get back out there. I am blessed by God to be able to spend time with my family, to be able to get back to work again."

On the importance of passing the Goodlatte-McCaul immigration bill:

"This is why you take votes. You need to see where people are. Getting 60 votes in the Senate is going to be hard for anything. Getting 218 in the House is going to be hard. I am a cosponsor of the Goodlatte-McCaul bill. This bill really does solve the problem and we are working with President Trump and his whole team. You want to talk about border security, building the wall, ending chain migration, ending this crazy lottery. You pick names out of a hat. We solve the DACA program, not with an amnesty path. You get in the back of the line, you be like everybody else now if you want to come to this country. This is a great country that people still want to come to because of the American dream. Let’s make it about merit, let’s get back to rule of law."

...

"I think right now [the Democrats] are more concerned about politics. There is a growing number of people that want to solve this problem. This Goodlatte-McCaul bill solves the real problem. If somebody’s got a better idea, bring it. But this is that deserves merit. I hope we pass it."