Rep. Jim Langevin's (D-RI) Personal Quest to Make Guns’ Toll More Visible

It happened a few minutes before the beginning of Jim Langevin’s junior cadet shift back in 1980.

He arrived at the police station here early, as usual. Two officers were standing in the locker room admiring a new .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Thinking the chamber was empty, one of them pulled the trigger. A bullet ricocheted off a locker and went right through the boy’s neck, severing his spinal cord.

At 16, he would never walk again and never fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

Now, three decades later and seven terms into his career as one of Rhode Island’s two members of the House of Representatives, Mr. Langevin, 48, is the only quadriplegic ever to serve in Congress. And his story, unknown to many of those who work with him every day in the Capitol, has thrust him into the raging national debate over gun control.