Norton Releases Letter to Dem. Leadership at Meeting with Victims' Families & Gun Control Coalition

Norton Releases Letter to Democratic Leadership at Meeting with Families of Victims and Gun Control Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), following a meeting today with the grassroots home-rule, gun control coalition, including the families of children killed in last month's mass drive-by shooting, released excerpts of a letter she sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid earlier this week seeking their assistance in preventing gun bills, introduced last week in the Senate and House, from becoming law. Norton said that attempts by any member of Congress to overturn D.C.'s gun laws must be opposed, but "Democrats, who support democratic self-government in the District of Columbia, should never be part of such an effort, and without Democratic support, this effort cannot succeed." Norton is seeking a meeting with Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), the Democratic sponsor of the gun bill.

The full letter cannot be released at this time because it contains details concerning strategy. The following are excerpts from Norton's letter:

"I am working on ways to move the D.C. House Voting Rights Act (DCVRA) even this year, considering our majority in this Congress. However, now that the NRA has returned with a new, and even more lethal, version of its anti-D.C. home rule gun bill, our first priority must be to prevent the gun bill's passage in the Senate and House. We ask for your help in using every tool available to prevent passage of this dangerous bill, which would make the post-9/11 nation's capital one of, if not the most, permissive gun jurisdiction in the country.

"Surely this is the least the District should expect from pro-gun Democratic Members, who have forced us to sacrifice our best chance for voting rights in more than 200 years. We are now in the worst of all positions--possibly losing both D.C.'s right to protect itself from gun proliferation as well as the DCVRA, despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a Democrat in the White House.

"Senators McCain and Tester have introduced the Senate companion to the Childers bill, which is virtually identical to the outrageous bill that the NRA sprung on House leadership and me a few days before the DCVRA was to be on the House floor last month.

"McCain-Tester/Childers, like Ensign, abolishes D.C.'s gun laws and its home-rule right to pass gun safety laws in the future, but it also goes much further to proliferate guns and expand their presence in public and private places throughout nation's capital, modeling our capital, which is also a big and dangerous city, as the free-wheeling gun capital of our country. The rest of the civilized world would find it unthinkable that we could do nothing to prevent this absurdity.

"The District now has had to suffer the indignity of having its voting rights delayed once again by the NRA, followed by an attempt to take down our gun laws anyway. The city stands to lose two of its most highly valued rights. We simply cannot inflict this double loss on the District.

"We do not see how Democrats, who have worked so hard for years for D.C. voting rights, for D.C. home rule and for homeland security, can leave the city powerless to protect itself. There is a profound sense of loss in our city that, despite our best efforts, voting rights has been delayed again. At the very least, all expect that Congress will not compound the loss. I ask for a meeting to discuss this problem before we lose the initiative entirely to the NRA."