Norton's Response on Voting Rights (3/19/09)

Norton's Response on Voting Rights

March 19, 2009

WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released the following statement when she was told that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty had indicated that he would accept the gun amendment that the City Council, DC Vote, the 200 organizations of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, many members of Congress and she have been trying to eliminate.

Statement

I regret that the Mayor's statement undercuts the progress that we have been making to get a gun amendment off the D.C. Voting Rights Act. He was on a conference call with the Majority Leaders, the Council Chair and me at the very beginning of the NRA episode, but he has not called me to ask about the status or the progress, especially about the conservative pro-gun Democrats who have been helping us. Perhaps the Mayor has not had time to read the bill, but I have repeatedly emphasized orally and in my written statements that the bill usurps entirely all D.C. mayoral and council jurisdiction over DC gun legislation in the future and gives the District's jurisdiction over guns exclusively to the Congress of the United States, where the NRA has had no trouble maintaining a majority. Mayor Fenty apparently spoke of coming back another day to remove the gun provision another day. A reading of the bill will show that there can be no coming back if this amendment is attached.