Tomorrow will be the one-year anniversary of last year’s shooting in Washington D.C. where a lone gunman targeted several Republican U.S. House representatives, including Union native Trent Kelly, while they were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity.
Kelly’s family and friends, many of whom still live in the area, were relieved when news came that he was unharmed and that the only fatality that day was the shooter himself, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police officers. However, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., lobbyist Matt Mika, and Capitol Police special agents Crystal Griner and David Bailey, who engaged the gunman in a firefight, were all injured by gunshots.
Ironically, this year’s Congressional Baseball Game for Charity will be played tomorrow, on the very anniversary of last year’s shooting. Representative Kelly, who was a standout on the diamond for the Yellowjackets during his high school days, will again take the field along with Scalise, who made a long but miraculous recovery.
At this time last summer, little did we know that the D.C. shooting would be one of the least deadly mass shootings the nation would see in the coming months, as there were four horrific shootings that alone claimed more than 100 lives across the nation.
First came the worst mass shooting in U.S. history in October when a gunman killed 58 people and injured nearly 500 at a country music concert in Las Vegas before turning the gun on himself.
The nation barely had time to mourn before, only a few weeks later, a gunman killed 25 people and injured 20 at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas before committing suicide.
Though the U.S. hadn’t suffered through a major K-12 school shooting for some time, we saw two occur in Florida and Texas in the first half of the year, with the young survivors of the former reigniting a nationwide push for more gun control.
Those shootings have been at the forefront of the ongoing discussion of how to prevent troubled and mentally unstable men, both young and old, from targeting innocent students, concert goers, worshipers and even U.S. Congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game.
The shooting in D.C. was prevented from being worse because of the quick reactions and superb training of the Capitol Police officers who acted fast to make sure that the gunman’s life would be the only one that was ended that day last summer.
However, we can’t expect to have expertly trained law enforcement personnel at every school and at every event. In the coming years, Kelly and Scalise and their charity baseball teammates might have to make hard decisions on Capitol Hill on how to stop more incidents like the one that nearly marred their practice session, but I am thankful that they lived to have the opportunity to do so.
Contact Demetrius at dthompson@newtoncountyappeal.com.
