MetalChris
Regular Member
imported post
Duct tape alert!
Source
The measure to at long last allow District of Columbia residents a voting member in the House has run afoul of the gun lobby that is determined to deny Washington another fundamental right: to regulate firearms.
The Senate approved the bill, but only after a callow roster, including a significant number of Democrats, caved in to the lobby and attached an amendment that would strike down the city’s reasonable laws for gun registration and trigger locks and its ban on assault weapons and sniper rifles.
The gun lobby’s malevolence now extends to the House, where Democratic leaders suddenly pulled back a clean bill. The leadership is agonizing, trying to convince Democrats from pro-gun districts to resist gun lobby pressure for the dangerous amendment. “This is Democratic members doing something to kill a basic civil rights bill,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s nonvoting House delegate, complained to The Hill newspaper.
The Supreme Court struck down Washington’s ban on handguns in the home last June. The same decision found that local government can impose reasonable gun restrictions.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in a political bind that calls for true leadership in reminding her members of the basic principle of representative government that’s at stake. Unfortunately, she made clear the Democrats’ wariness over gun control in demurring from Attorney General Eric Holder’s call to eventually restore the federal ban on assault weapons. “We need to enforce the laws we have right now,” she said, parroting the pro-gun line.
Ms. Pelosi, who has championed Washington’s cause, should not allow the gun lobby to deny the district’s taxpaying citizens their right to a vote in the House — or their right to safer homes and streets.
Duct tape alert!
Source
The measure to at long last allow District of Columbia residents a voting member in the House has run afoul of the gun lobby that is determined to deny Washington another fundamental right: to regulate firearms.
The Senate approved the bill, but only after a callow roster, including a significant number of Democrats, caved in to the lobby and attached an amendment that would strike down the city’s reasonable laws for gun registration and trigger locks and its ban on assault weapons and sniper rifles.
The gun lobby’s malevolence now extends to the House, where Democratic leaders suddenly pulled back a clean bill. The leadership is agonizing, trying to convince Democrats from pro-gun districts to resist gun lobby pressure for the dangerous amendment. “This is Democratic members doing something to kill a basic civil rights bill,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city’s nonvoting House delegate, complained to The Hill newspaper.
The Supreme Court struck down Washington’s ban on handguns in the home last June. The same decision found that local government can impose reasonable gun restrictions.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in a political bind that calls for true leadership in reminding her members of the basic principle of representative government that’s at stake. Unfortunately, she made clear the Democrats’ wariness over gun control in demurring from Attorney General Eric Holder’s call to eventually restore the federal ban on assault weapons. “We need to enforce the laws we have right now,” she said, parroting the pro-gun line.
Ms. Pelosi, who has championed Washington’s cause, should not allow the gun lobby to deny the district’s taxpaying citizens their right to a vote in the House — or their right to safer homes and streets.