On the night of April 25, 2026, Steve Scalise was inside the ballroom of the Washington Hilton when the gunshots started.
A man had charged the security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner carrying two firearms. Secret Service agents grabbed the president and vice president off the stage. Waitstaff dove for cover.
Scalise had been here before.
"Some bad memories started coming back," he told NOTUS.
Nine years earlier, in June 2017, a gunman opened fire on the Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. A bullet went through Scalise's hip and shattered his pelvis. He nearly died. It took months of surgeries and rehab before he could walk again.
Two shootings. Nine years apart. Both times, he was in the room.
What he said the first time
Four months after he was shot — and two days after a gunman killed 59 people in Las Vegas — Fox News's Martha MacCallum asked Scalise whether nearly dying had changed how he thought about guns.
"I think it's fortified it."
He added that Congress shouldn't be "promoting our political agenda" at a moment like that, and that the focus belonged on victims and law enforcement.
The Hill noted in that same piece that Scalise's own congressional website advertised his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, and that the bills he backed would make it easier to buy guns across state lines and force every state to honor other states' concealed-carry permits.
There's a comparison the reporting made at the time and it still lands. Gabby Giffords was shot in the head at a constituent event in 2011. She spent the years after it building an organization to change gun laws. Scalise was shot in 2017 and spent the years after it voting to loosen them.
What he actually did
This isn't about words. Look at the votes.
Six months after he was shot, on December 6, 2017, the House passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, 231 to 198. It would force every state to recognize concealed-carry permits issued by every other state — including states with the loosest standards in the country. Scalise voted yes. (It's the same bill Richard Hudson is still pushing today, over the objections of the Fraternal Order of Police.)
March 11, 2021 — the House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, 227 to 203, requiring a background check on essentially every gun sale, including private and online sales. Scalise voted no.
June 24, 2022 — one month after Uvalde, the House gave final approval to the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, 234 to 193. The law was the first significant federal gun safety measure in nearly thirty years — money for school mental health, an incentive for state red-flag laws, tougher background checks for buyers under 21, and a narrowing of the "boyfriend loophole." Fourteen House Republicans voted for it.
Scalise, then the second-ranking Republican in the House, voted no. He also voted against even letting the bill come to the floor.
July 29, 2022 — the House passed an assault weapons ban, 217 to 213. Scalise voted no.
Nobody in the history of the House has taken more
OpenSecrets tracks money from the gun rights industry to members of Congress going back to 1990. Among all U.S. Representatives across all those years, the number one recipient is Steve Scalise, at $871,215.
Not the top ten. Number one. More than Paul Ryan, more than Kevin McCarthy, more than Jim Jordan, more than anyone else who has ever held a House seat.
That's not a coincidence of longevity. It's a relationship. And he isn't just casting his own vote — as House Majority Leader he is the man who decides what legislation reaches the floor. Every background-check bill, every red-flag bill, every magazine limit that dies without a vote dies at a desk he controls.
Louisiana pays for this
Scalise represents Louisiana's 1st District. Louisiana loses about 22.9 people per 100,000 to gun-related injuries — one of the highest rates in the country, more than a thousand Louisianians a year. His constituents do not get a security detail.
And in his own account of the April shooting, given days after it happened, guns never come up. He talks about his security detail. He talks about grabbing Rep. Jared Moskowitz on the way to the exit. He talks about calling his wife. He praises law enforcement: "It's a special calling to be a law enforcement officer."
All of that is true and none of it is a policy. The Capitol Police officers who saved his life in 2017, and the agents who cleared that ballroom in 2026, are the people we send toward the gunfire after the gun is already in the room. Scalise's entire legislative record is about making sure nothing stops it from getting there.
He is not alone in this — we've written about the Republicans with the worst records on guns, and it's a long list. But no one else on it has been shot, been shot at again, and cashed nearly $900,000 in gun-industry checks in between.
Twice now, Steve Scalise has been close enough to hear the shots. Twice he has come out the other side and gone back to work protecting the industry that puts the guns there.
We deserve better.
Source
Reese Gorman, Correspondents' Dinner shooting brought back 'bad memories' for Scalise — NOTUS, published by Verite News, April 28, 2026. Photo via Verite News.
