Maryland congressman on White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday following a shooting outside the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel where the White House Correspondents' Dinner was taking place.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were whisked off the stage by Secret Service agents as the sound of gunfire sent dinner attendees ducking under tables.

The suspect is in custody. He has been identified as 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance California, multiple sources told CBS News.

He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives, and is believed to have acted alone, police said.

Rep. Raskin talked about the events that transpired after the shooting saying:

"I just entered the room, and I was talking to some reporters who approached me from the Boston Globe. Their table was right near the perimeter. As I was entering the ballroom. Kerry Kennedy was their guest, and we were in conversation when there were three loud booms. Heard some screams, plates, glasses, silverware hitting the ground, and then everybody was yelling, get down. Somebody kind of pushed me from the back, and we all ended up on the floor. When it was over, Kerry, who, of course, lost her father to an assassin gunman and her uncle, President Kennedy, she said, I can't believe that school children are dealing with this all across America and don't have the resources to process their trauma. And so that launched a conversation about gun violence and how you know, somewhere between 275 and 300 people are shot every day in our country, and we lose more than 100 of them every day. So even as this nightmare was unfolding at the White House Correspondents Dinner, dozens and dozens of people had been shot and killed in our country. And so I hope this isn't just an inside the beltway story. I hope we talk about the conditions for school children and people all over the country who are dealing with this."

This led Brennan to ask the congressman if he thinks things will change in reopening the government since the U.S. entered its tenth week of the partial shutdown, and Raskin said:

"I certainly hope so. I mean, we, you know, of course, we had a unanimous vote out of the Senate, all the Republicans, all the Democrats, and then all the Democrats in the House vote to restore all of the funding, except for ICE. And of course, it was about ICE killing innocent people in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti and Renee Good that led to this standoff over this so I hope we can improve public safety for everybody."

Brennan then asked, as the U.S. enters the midterm election this year, if the democratic language needs to change in light of the shooting, and Raskin said:

"We have said all along that we need every politician in the country, every leader in the country, every citizen IN the country denouncing political violence across the board, regardless of where it's coming from. So, you know, I find this a welcome change in rhetoric. But you know what happened last week, they brought a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose whole purpose is to or is to investigate violent right wing extremism in the country, and now they're prosecuting them for having used undercover agents, which, of course, the FBI uses and the government uses all the time."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Raskin, click here.