[UPDATE: The CBS News report cited in this article is erroneous; Hodgkinson used an SKS in the attack. JKP]

CBS News reports that the man who attacked the GOP Congressional baseball practice was James T. Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Illinois. They are further reporting that the rifle used was “similar to an M4,” a reference to the Colt M4 which is used by the U.S. Military. The lack of specificity in that identification means we still don’t know the specific firearm used, but more than likely it was a semi-automatic magazine fed rifle of some sort.

Washington Post states that Hodgkinson

owns a home inspection business. His home inspection license expired in November 2016 and was not renewed, state records show.

Hodgkinson was charged in April 2006 with battery and aiding damage to a motor vehicle, according to online records in St. Clair County, Illinois. The charges were dismissed, records show.

Representative Scalise, who was shot in the hip during the attack, is apparently out of surgery and recovering.

Always remember: mainstream media sources are notoriously bad at getting facts about firearms right, so take the above with a grain of salt.

More as it develops.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

90 COMMENTS

  1. Rabid Berniebro commie scumbag. Called it. Sounds like it’s time to start blackbagging ANTIFA.

    • On the radio just now: his Facebook page riddled with anti Trump/anti Republican rhetoric.

      My shocked face…

        • But, but, but, Comedy Central and the news said it was conservative Christians! What am I to believe?

          The mountain of data showing a consistent left-driven campaign of violence, or the admonition of my “betters” that I am the problem?

        • “Bud says:
          June 14, 2017 at 20:05
          I heard Dylann Roof and Jared Loughner were big Obummer fans.”

          Roof was to the right similar to leftist Malvo and Mohammed (who killed way more). Which is to say on the extreme and more mentally ill than political. Certainly not part of mainstream Democrat groups such as this Democrat mass shooter. Roof got his gun because of Eric Holders recommendation on reducing charges for distribution levels of narcotics. If Roof had been arested before Holder’s policies soft on drug dealers had been put into place, he would have not passed his background check.

          As far as Laughner he was left and right, but had no affiliation with any political group whatsoever. He was found psychotic.

    • I went to his FB page and it kept refreshing and bouncing around, confused me until I figured out people were commenting on his page like several per second!

    • Wow. The POS went right down the ‘Justice Democrat’ rabbit hole pretty hard.

      Ft. Hood shooter: registered Democrat. Columbine shooters: children of registered Democrats. Virginia Tech shooter: registered democrat. Colorado Tech shooter: registered democrat. Connecticut school shooter: registered democrat.

      The problem is not, has never been, and never will be ‘too many guns’. No, it’s too many democrats.

    • Yep. Social liberal extremist fruit loop that thinks that my money belongs to some collective, and willing to shoot people over it.

    • A customer called me Bernie Sanders one time. Sigh…
      And what do you know? He’s also a John Oliver fan. I wonder if he’ll be discussed on his show lol.

      • And what was all that shit about Vietnam? What the FUCK, has anything got to do with Vietnam?

        • Well EVERYONE KNOWS that 100% of us came home from Vietnam (and the middle east) hooked on drugs, kill crazy, with PTSD, and most likely to be a home grown terrorist. Ask John Kerry who testified to this before a Congressional committee. Just ask Sen Feinstein who says, ‘no veteran should ever be allowed to own a firearm because they are all mentally ill with PTSD’. We could send them off to die for the country, using weapons far deadlier than civilians can buy, defending peoples’ lives and protecting billions of dollars worth of weapons systems and equipment, but we can’t trust them. The voters, think much higher of the latest generation of warriors than they do of the Vietnam vets, so it’s easier to target Vietnam vets as the nut cases.

    • If the rhetoric used by the left against the right was true (ie. Biden’s “[Mitt Romney’s] gonna put y’all back in chains”), violent action might be understandable.

      I just feel sorry for all of these people that actually believe the ridiculous “I’ve got plausible deniability, it was a metaphor, right?” rhetoric in its literal interpretation.

    • See Bushmaster and Daniel Defense and everyone else who calls their guns “M4s” because a court ruled it was too general a term to trademark. Also note that for the past 6 years or so all Colt semi-auto AR15s have had “M4 Carbine” rollmarked on them.

  4. They are further reporting that the rifle used was an M4, a common semiautomatic carbine popular among sportsmen in America and also in use with the U.S. military.

    An “M4” is NOT a common “semiautomatic” carbine popular among sportsmen in America.” An M4 is a military rifle with features not available to to public.

    Thank you CBS for more fake news.

  6. Would someone from TTAG with a Facebook account look in to the James T. Hodgkinson that posted (the 15th photo down) on the “Republicans Suck ” FB page and see if they are the same person?

  7. Was it an M4 or was it semi auto? It can’t be both. These idiots still don’t care to tell their viewers the truth. Because they know what they are doing.

    The MSM is deliberately trying to convince people there is no difference between our military’s M4 and civilian AR15s.

    • Except that a lot of manufacturers market their civvy-legal semi-auto AR-15 pattern rifles as M4’s (including colt).

    • ??

      Nothing in your link (or the link that one references) says anything about anyone other than Scalise’s security detail as having shot back.

    • No, Representative Bishop did NOT shoot back. His comment was referring to the U.S. Capital police security detail assigned to one of the Representatives at the baseball field. To be perfectly clear, Mr. Bishop was stating that it was the U.S. Capital police who returned fire and saved lives.

    • According to the link, it wasn’t Bishop. Bishop is just describing the scene. Could have been one of the security detail. He doesn’t identify who it was.

      But all of them should have had the opportunity to be armed.

      While they could have legally CCW’d in Virginia, the fact that most of them spend most of their day in anti-gun D.C. probably makes it difficult for any of them to carry.

    • Wrong. Congressman Bishop described the scene, how they were all sitting ducks trying to take cover, as the shooter took up to ten minutes conducting his spree.

      According to the report you cite, from CBS Detroit, Bishop is quoted as being thankful for someone being brave and armed who fired back at the attacker. Bishop himself is not the one reported to have returned fire.

      Instead, that was an armed member of Majority Leader Scalise’s security detail who returned fire.

  10. A deranged BernieBot from Illinois. 66(!)…suicide by cop. More guns-and I’ll keep my EARPLUGS.

  11. I have seen people with bolt action, lever action and pump action rifles work magic with them.
    I don’t think this was a semi auto weapon. If not how did he get an “M4” in the land of Chiraq????
    The MSM will cover up.

    • There are no basic limits on long guns in Illinois. Most in state FFLs and gun stores will not restrict your purchase by address. You can own an AR 15 if you live in Chicago, you just can’t have it in city limits.

      • He’s implying the gun was an *actual” M4 (select fire, not semi-auto) and wondering how someone in Illinois got their hands on one…

        • Everybody and their grandma sells their guns as M4 with M4 stamped on them nowadays. It’s a generic term that cannot be trademarked, even by the military.

  13. Just gotta add, all the “VigLink” links are really a pain in the neck. You think a commenter may have added an informative link, but then you mouseover, and, no, it’s just spam.

  14. And everyone has made fun of liberals having guns, saying they’d be to dim to know what to do with them. Obviously they arent .

    • I don’t know, wasn’t able to do too much with a rifle, element of surprise, and only opposition was 2 guys with handguns 100 feet away… When I read this my first thought was good thing he wasn’t a good ol’ boy from Missouri, would’ve been much worse!

    • I don’t know, he probably fired 30 shots and only hit on 4 of them. Doesn’t sound like a guy with much range time with the weapon.

    • 50 rounds fired from a rifle, at a bunch of unsuspecting people, with five hits, none fatal. This guy is too dim.

  15. Illinois has very strict gun laws, how did this radical libtard obtain a military rifle? Sounds like a Manchurian Candidate to me.

    • The IL laws aren’t all that strict. There’s a 1-day waiting period for long guns and a 3-day wait for handguns. Otherwise there are few restrictions other than having to possess a Firearms Owner ID (FOID) card. No particular guns bans like other States (CA, CN, NY). No magazine bans.

      • There are specific gun bans, depending where in the state you live, just not state-wide.

        No restrictions that I know of in Belleville (St. Claire county).

  16. Some people think if a gun was used instead of a different device more deaths would have occurred. This event shows that’s a bad assumption.

    • He lived. Hopefully he doesn’t walk with a limp after this. He’ll probably make some corny joke about wanting to bean the guy, but that will be the end of it publicly.

    • Yep, saved us taxpayers the cost of a trial and incarceration. Thanks boys!

  22. Wow select fire and a short barrel where can I buy one of these without having to jump through the rings to get one. Good ol news screwing up gun models again go figure.

  24. Belleville, Il is in St. Clair county and it is an absolute liberal democrat cesspool! I could write an entire book on the corruption, drugs, and political bull shyt that goes on there on a daily basis.

  25. one of the Republican staffers was interviewed and he said the weapon used by the Leftist Democrat shooter was an AK-74 style rifle. NOT an AR-15 style weapon.

    Thank God “Mr Hodgkinson’s Disease” bought a shitty gun and couldn’t hit what he was aiming at.

    • He probably didn’t have a whole lot of practice.

      The only range I know of in Belleville is an indoor, 25-yard range.

      I went there once, and was not allowed to use my own (factory, still in the box) .223 ammo…. was forced to buy theirs. Didn’t know until I was leaving and paying the bill that they charged nearly $30 per box of 20 rounds!!!

  26. As Rand Paul said, and everyone here agrees until their favorite party is at the end of the barrel, the 2A is about fighting government tyranny. Looks like this guy agrees.

  27. $50 says this commie loser was all about gun control…just doesn’t apply to him, on his crusade of socialist justice.

  30. Wasn’t the guns fault was the crazy moron behind it , no gun in itself is dangerous there are only dangerous people .

  32. On Fox News the one congressman they interviewed said it was an AK-47 then corrected himself to say a Kalashnikov style weapon which makes me think he knows what he’s talking about. He said it had the distinctive curved magazine and general silhouette of them.

  34. NBC News is calling it an AK-47, which they’ve variously called an “assault weapon” and an “assault rifle,” since NBC doesn’t know that by definition, an assault rifle has to be fully automatic (select fire).
    But NBC also doesn’t know the difference between an AK-47 and an M4, so it could’ve been an M4.

  35. NYT and CNN are both quoting multiple sources that it was an SKS and an unknown 9mm pistol.

    • The SKS/AK variant and 9mm is what I’ve been seeing on several different news sites. The M4 comment is probably just the typical knee-jerk, anti-AR crowd trying to demonized one of our favorite guns. As usual. I just don’t see an out-of-work guy living in his van in DC blowing his wad on an AR. On the other hand, a cheap ass, pawn shop sks sounds more doable for him. Plus, the accuracy he exhibited sounds a lot like a used up SKS. The pistol was probably a Makarov or some other cheap, worn out, pos combloc gun. Those commies love them some Maks and ak’s.

  36. He used a SKS.
    But hey, we shouldn’t expect any knowledge or any missed opprotunity on trying to ban “assault weapons” by libtard media…

  37. He used a 1940’s rifle.It was a SKS with 10 round stripped clips. Nothing “Assault” about it. More fake news.

  39. You people are funny some time and drink as much Kool-Aid as the Dems. It’s not a party thing so stop falling for the banana in the tailpipe , it’s a Mental Health issue. Press getting the weapons wrong is no different then them describing the guy as “Anglo-Saxon”. It’s a game to make you say just the things you usually say. I think a lot of people don’t use the internet for what is was intended and that’s to procure knowledge. Don’t just read YOUR point of view read others and then make a decision.

    Signed,
    Democrat who believes in the 2nd Amendment and other Republican stuff just not most of it.

  40. Roof got his handgun because the FBI called the wrong police department (Richland County) 2 days into the 3 day mandatory wait. By the time the FBI got the right department , time was up ( the correct department (Lexington County) did not return the call anyway ).

  41. I’m amazed how much detail they had on the shooter. But the lack of info on the firearms is equally interesting. With as much info on the bad guy, they should have been able to tell you what model, serial number, where purchased and how much he paid for each round of ammo.

  42. There is a BIG difference in an SKS, stripper clip reloaded rifle compared to an M4 military magazine fed M16 type rifle…. Get the story right.

Comments are closed.