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A gunman opened fire at U.S. Congressmen and others who were gathered at a practice this morning for the Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and at least four others were reportedly injured. The gunman, who has been identified by unnamed sources as James T. Hodgkinson III, was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries:
A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire Wednesday at a park in Alexandria, Va., as Republican members of Congress held a morning baseball practice, wounding at least five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.).
The suspected gunman is James T. Hodgkinson III, 66, from Illinois, according to multiple law enforcement sources. President Trump announced that the gunman, who was wounded in a shootout with officers, has died at an area hospital.
The wounded also included two Capitol Police officers and a congressional aide, according to one law enforcement official and witness accounts.
Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip and is in stable condition.
Hodgkinson's motive may have already been identified by the media:
A Facebook page belonging to a person with the same name includes pictures of Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and rhetoric against President Trump, including a post that reads: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."
Charles Orear, 50, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday that he became friendly with Hodgkinson during their work together in Iowa on Sanders's campaign. Orear said Hodgkinson was a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice toward others.
Also at LA Times, Reuters, The Atlantic, The Hill, and CNN.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:12PM (2 children)
What are they doing playing baseball in the morning? Don't they have actual jobs to go to and perform? Isn't this some kind of leisure activity that you can do in your own spare time? That said -- fucked up people, doing fucked up things -- news at 11.
So if you thought it was hard to get some actual face time with your politician before this probably just created another layer between you and them. More money for security to politicians -- two bodyguards isn't enough anymore, they'll be requiring their own SWAT-team and a personal sniper. As far as being a gun-control issue it might be trickier to predict the response -- had it been a white republican shooting black people it would have been easy, now it was some lefty cracker gunning down evil old white men so I'm sure we'll see a lot of comments about how they can blame themselves and this is the system they like. After all the gun-man was one of the "good guys" (TM) ...
Why do these crazy people so often have those weird double names and a numeral -- that makes them appear a lot more redneck-y then they probably are.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:20PM
Maybe I'm not catching the sarcasm but I left a Wikipedia link right there in the summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Baseball_Game [wikipedia.org]
Now we could argue about whether this is a good use of their time, but do you really want to go there?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @06:35PM
They were at baseball practice - practicing for the charity game linked by takyon - in the morning because it gets hot in the afternoon.