GOP Senate candidate uses Scalise shooting in ad

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) is using audio from the June shooting at a Republican baseball practice that injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) in a new ad.

The ad opens with the sound of five gunshots along with audio of the response to the shooting at last month’s practice for Republican lawmakers before the annual Congressional Baseball Game.  

“June 14: A Bernie Sanders supporter fires on Republican congressmen. Mo Brooks gives his belt as a tourniquet to help the wounded,” the text on the screen reads.   

{mosads}Then, Brooks is shown responding from the site of the shooting to questions from what the ad calls as the “liberal media” about whether the shooting changed his views on guns. 

“The Second Amendment, the right to bare arms, is to help ensure that we always have a republic. So no, I’m not changing my positions on any of the rights that we enjoy as Americans,” Brooks says in the ad, standing in the center of a throng of reporters. 

Asked about the ad, Scalise spokesman Chris Bond told The Hill, “I guess some people have their own ideas about what’s appropriate.”

Brooks offered accounts of the shooting in its immediate aftermath, remaining on the phone with CNN as the network took him live for an extended period of time. There, he recounted the shooting and the attempts by law enforcement and others at the scene to respond to the victims and secure the scene. 

At one point, Brooks said he used his belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of a staff member who was shot in the leg. 

Brooks said that in an interview earlier this month that attention from the shooting gives him “mixed emotions,” claiming that he won’t “bring it up” unless asked. 

“If you noticed my speeches at these public events, I never bring up that event. If I’m asked about it — as you know, when I’m asked about most anything — I will respond to the question. But I don’t bring it up,” he said in an interview with Talk 99.5. 

Five people were injured in the shooting: two Capitol Police officers, a congressional staffer, a lobbyist and Scalise. Scalise remains in the hospital as he recovers from the gunshot in his hip.  

The ad hit airwaves on Monday and will be played on broadcast and cable television as well as on digital platforms to boost Brooks’s bid to serve out the remainder of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s Senate term. Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) was appointed to fill the seat in the months before the special election, but now has to run for the right to fill out the elected term. 

Strange is the pick of Senate leadership and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which are both treating him as the incumbent. That controversial move was panned by Brooks and other Strange critics.  

Strange, Brooks and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore are the top candidates in that race — two are expected to move on to a runoff after the Aug. 15 Republican primary if no single candidate wins the majority.