other shootings who were newly animated about gun control one february afternoon as he welcomed survivors of the mass shooting in parkland fla to his office in the capitol mr scalise found himself in a backandforth with a teenage student about state laws that could have stopped the young attackerhe shifted the discussion from gun control to one about the need for confiding in others something he did in the hospital when teammates visited and described what the shooting looked like from different angleshis encounter with a gunman forced him and his teammates who would seek one another out on the house floor in the months afterward to treat the issue as a matter of experiencei grew up with the culture said will batson a senate aide who was on the pitching mound when the first shots were fired friends had guns theyd go hunting before school mass shootings you never think youre going to have to deal with itbut even as the republicans many of them gun owners reexamined their relationship with firearms the shooting only hardened their beliefs the house this year has repeatedly rejected proposals for stricter gun control legislationin a senate campaign ad mr brooks used footage of himself from the morning of the shooting to promote his commitment to gun rights a move that upset mr scalises staffimagecreditgabriella demczuk for the new york timesif we had had guns we could have ended it there mr brooks said in an interview none of us were in a position where we could defend ourselvessome were confident in how the scene would have unfolded had they been armed mr loudermilk for his part surmised that mr hodgkinson who was killed in the attack could have been cut off earlier i had no way of defending myself or my friends he said i felt completely vulnerablebut some on the team didnt see the question in such a straightforward waybrad barton the son of the texas congressman who coached the team last year initially believed that there may have been two gunmen the sounds and ricochets seemed to be coming from all directionsbeing in a mass shooting brad barton said hinders a persons ability to process what you see and then respond rationallyi dont know what i would do if i were there again he said can you see the gunman its too much to know would you run or hide until the lead starts flying you just dont knowsenator jeff flake of arizona who hid in the firstbase dugout as he watched bullets hit the gravel in front of him said his teammates attention to gun rights after the fact was just another sign of deepening tribalismits tough to support some shade of gray in the middle when this issue probably calls for that he said im not one who says lets ban every weapon or force registration on everybody but there are things we can and should do on a commonsense basis and that list is longer after