MILWAUKEE — Chuck Fleischmann and the team had just wrapped up a good practice on a suburban, D.C. baseball field when a killer came calling.
The representative for Tennessee’s 3rd congressional district and his teammates suddenly found themselves sitting ducks as a deranged leftist gunman “hunting Republicans” opened fire.
“We were talking about how well practice had gone,” Fleischmann told the Tennessean in a phone interview moments after the horrifying attack. “And then as I went around, I heard a large single pop. One shot. I didn’t know it was a gun at first.”
He learned soon enough. Suddenly, he said, shots began “raining down” on the field. The Republican congressional baseball team, just wrapping up the final practice before the annual charity fundraiser game between the left and the right, was under attack.
When it was all over, the gunman — apparently a devout follower of socialist Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — had shot four people, including then-House majority whip Steve Scalise, R-La., who was critically injured in the leftist terrorist attack. A Capitol Police officer (Scalise’s security detail thankfully was on the scene) was injured by the shots, as well as lobbyist Matt Mika and Zack Barth, a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams of Texas.
Miraculously, none of the victims died in a mass shooting that the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Alexandria found to be “an act of terrorism” that was “fueled by rage against Republican legislators.” The shooter was shot by officers and later died in a
