Congressional shooter’s name should fade with his ideas

U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis will not use the name of the Belleville man who shot his colleague and nearly shot him.

While he refuses to recall the name, the details of what the man did on June 14 gave Davis resolve.

Before the shooting started, Davis yelled across the baseball field to U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan about catching a ride back. Duncan didn’t hear him. He was talking to the man who would open fire and asked Duncan whether Republicans or Democrats were practicing for the annual congressional charity game.

When it started, Davis saw Rep. Steve Scalise on the ground but couldn’t get to him as more than 60 shots came from the third-base dugout. He dove into the first-base dugout atop others. He eventually ran across the street and took refuge in a couple’s apartment. He used their phone to call his wife because his cell phone was in his gear bag hanging in the dugout.

When Davis told his wife that their friend Scalise was shot, the apartment owner later told him she could hear Davis’s wife screaming through the phone.

And that’s basically the point. These folks are more than politicians playing political games, facing off over health care and vilifying one another on 24-hour news channels. They are friends and co-workers. Republicans and Democrats. They work together all the time.

Which is where Davis is at now. It is even more imperative that Congress work for the good of those they serve. It is more important that both sides of the aisle work together to pass health care reform, reform the tax system and get a plan to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. He emphasizes that there is a window of opportunity at present for bi-partisan work and compromise on those top issues, but that it closes the nearer we get to the 2018 elections.

He also wants voters to know that he has good friends among the Democrats, friends that were deeply worried when they couldn’t get him on that cell phone and whom he sat with on that day as he walked into Congress for the leaders’ messages.

They understand how to work together and get things done. They have yet to find a problem worthy of solving with a tweet.

And those who try to make their points in our great national debates through violence are unworthy of a second thought.

This story was originally published August 26, 2017 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Congressional shooter’s name should fade with his ideas."