Norton Headed for Rules Committee Today as Republicans Pile on Gun Amdendments (3/3/09)

Norton Headed for Rules Committee Today as Republicans Pile On Gun Amendments and Seek Others

March 3, 3009

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) last night requested a meeting with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as she planned to testify for the D.C. House Voting Rights Act at 5 p.m. today (or at another time) before the Rules Committee at the Capitol, room H-312, against two gun amendments and other Republican amendments that have been filed. Norton will testify for a rule devoted solely to the D.C. House Voting Rights bill, the rule similar to the one that allowed the bill to achieve victory in the House in the last session. Norton fully expected that the NRA would have a House member seek a gun amendment similar to the Ensign amendment that was added to S. 160, the Senate version of the D.C. House Voting Rights bill that was passed by the Senate last week.

Last year, when guns emerged during the voting rights House debate on a Republican motion to recommit, the bill had to be pulled and the Democratic leadership was successful in bringing the bill back for the much celebrated first-ever victory for voting rights in the House. The bill fell three votes short in the Senate. This year, the leadership predictably faces the same situation as when then-pro-gun House members forced the Democratic leadership to allow a gun bill that passed by a vote of 260-160. With the help of a number of Senate allies, however, Norton was able to stop that bill from being heard in the Senate. Norton called such amendments on a bill for voting rights, "impossible to accept."

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, for the first time in its history, is "scoring" the Rule to indicate to members and to leadership how serious its 160 organizations would regard allowing or voting for a gun amendment in a voting rights bill. "Nothing would take the luster from the remarkable House voting rights achievement last year more than an Ensign-like amendment that is so reckless and radical that it puts at risk everybody from the president down to the kids that the amendment would allow to possess weapons. There is no excuse this time for members to support a gun amendment even in their own interest, particularly to a voting rights bill. The House vote on the stand-alone gun bill occurred shortly before members faced their own elections last year. No such immediate threat is in the picture now. Members have just been elected, and many who voted for the bill were not only not endangered, but many were in safe seats." Norton will need considerable help from the leadership to be able to show the difference between votes on last year's gun bill and today's gun amendments, however.

Last year, the D.C. City Council quickly amended its gun laws and is in full compliance with the Supreme Court decision in Heller v. District of Columbia, according to constitutional experts. Current gun laws in the District permit residents to own semiautomatic handguns and use firearms in self-defense in their homes, and no longer ban handguns in the home. Norton said, "Sen. Ensign's statement on the floor in support of his amendment does not even attempt to show that the new D.C. gun law is unconstitutional or that the D.C. law today fails to meet the requirements of Heller. He did not say so because he could not truthfully make that claim. The decision requires that residents be permitted to own handguns accessible to them for self-defense. The District law goes well beyond the decision, for example, allowing semi-automatic guns."

At a House hearing on the gun bill last year, police chiefs from several federal law enforcement agencies and from the District testified that a bill that is virtually identical to the Ensign amendment was a threat to homeland security here, including the federal buildings. Here are the most dangerous consequences of the House amendments: 1) No gun registration and therefore no way for police to trace guns used in crimes in every big city: 2) No regulation of guns, only a bare federal statute, resulting in one of the most permissive gun laws in the nation, making it difficult to protect dignitaries and parades as needed in the post-911 era; 3) No age limit for possession of guns, including military-styled weapons, which could well attract teens in light of the upsurge in juvenile gun violence in urban and rural areas; 4) Permits a person who is voluntarily committed to a mental institution to own a gun immediately upon release without the usual waiting period; 5) Makes a unique exception to anti-trafficking laws for District residents to become the only U.S. citizens able to cross state lines to purchase guns and bring them back from nearby states, facilitating gun-running by criminals between these states and putting national and local safety at risk in the nation's capital; 6) Permits a "gun show loophole," which avoids background checks in the nation's capital, i.e. District of Columbia residents could purchase weapons from private individuals and at gun shows that would be permitted in the nation's capital without background checks, putting national and local safety and security at risk; 7) No ability of the District to revise its laws for the safety of residents even if serious threats arise.