Republican Rep. Thomas Massie fired back at Democrat Rep. David Cicilline after he suggested during a congressional hearing that there wasn’t "a single incident" where someone with an assault weapon "was stopped by a person with a gun."
"The fact that guns are used by good guys every single day to prevent and stop bad guys is an inconvenient truth for Rep Cicilline and other Democrats who want to trample on the Second Amendment," Massie told Fox News Digital on Tuesday following his exchange with Cicilline last week.
"I don’t think there is a single incident – and maybe there’s one, but I’ve not found one – of an assailant using an assault weapon that was stopped by a person with a gun, so this is a – maybe there’s one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of shootings, but the truth of the matter is school resource officers are an important response to school safety," Cicilline, who represents Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District, said on Thursday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Democrat-backed gun control bill Protecting Our Kids Act.
Following Cicilline’s statement, Massie pushed back and submitted a list to the congressional record of incidents where "good guys" with guns stopped "bad guys" from carrying out mass shootings.
"The Democrats – I don’t know if they’re just in willful ignorance of what happens in this country or they’re being deceptive today, but I would like to introduce into the record a list of cases where concealed handgun permit holders have likely stopped mass public shootings. This is from crimeresearch.org, and it’s published May 27th, 2022," Massie explained.
Massie’s list of cases included an incident that occurred in the last couple of weeks in Charleston, West Virginia where a man with an AR-15 opened fire on a graduation party but was stopped after being shot by a woman who was legally carrying a gun.
"Portland, Oregon, February 19, 2022," Massie said, outlining another incident, "Homeowner allegedly confronted participants at a racial justice demonstration Saturday night before pulling out a handgun and shooting multiple people in the crowd, leaving one woman dead and several others injured. The shooting ended when a person, with the group of demonstrators, who is licensed to conceal-carry a firearm, fired back, striking the homeowner in the hip."
Massie also brought up a 2021 incident where a property owner was credited with saving multiple lives "after he pulled out a legally possessed 9mm handgun" and killed a man who had opened fire on a Syracuse, New York crowd.
"The very gun that Joe Biden wants to ban," Massie said, referencing the president's comment last month suggesting that he supports banning 9mm handguns.
Cicilline's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.