Norton Keeps Amendment to Weaken D.C. Gun Safety Out of Final Defense Authorization Bill

WASHINGTON, DC – The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today announced that Norton succeeded in keeping an amendment to weaken D.C. gun safety laws out of the final National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, passed by the Senate last night. The amendment was added on the House floor to the original House version of the bill, passed in June, but Norton got it removed from the final House-Senate compromise version of the bill, which now goes to the president for his signature. The amendment, which was added to the original House bill by Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA), expresses the sense of Congress that active duty military personnel in their private capacity should be exempt from the gun safety laws of the District of Columbia, but not those of any other state or locality.

"I am grateful to Senator Carl Levin and Representative Adam Smith for working with me to yet again defeat this infringement on D.C.'s gun safety laws and D.C.'s home rule," said Norton. "Republicans, who profess to support a limited federal government and local control of local matters, override their own party's principle when they pick on the District of Columbia because they think they can. However – as our residents, our House and Senate allies and the gun safety community have shown – they are wrong."

Gingrey earlier this year also introduced the amendment as a stand-alone bill, but it has not received a vote. Last Congress, Gingrey added the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 on the House floor. However, like this year, Norton, with the help of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA), got the provision removed from the version of the bill the president signed into law. Last week, the National Rifle Association (NRA)-backed D.C. gun bill, which would wipe out D.C.'s gun laws and which forced Norton to pull the D.C. House Voting Rights Act from the House floor in 2010, was reintroduced in the House by Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH). It was also reintroduced last year and gained 174 cosponsors, but did not come to the floor for a vote. Last Congress, in addition to the Gingrey amendment and the NRA-backed D.C. gun bill, another attack on the District's gun safety laws was defeated when the House Judiciary Committee rejected an amendment that would have allowed out-of-state residents with state-issued concealed carry permits to carry concealed guns in the District.

Published: December 20, 2013