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D.C. voting rights? Not this deal Sunday, April 18, 2010 THE HOUSE of Representatives is set this week to take a historic vote that would give residents of the District of Columbia voting representation in Congress. It is a cause that we have long advocated; the disenfranchisement of Americans who pay their taxes and defend their country is an abomination. Sadly, however, the measure comes with an unacceptable poison pill: a surrender of the District's ability to enact its own gun laws. House Democratic leaders plan to bring to the floor as early as Wednesday a bill to give the District a voting member in the House. Similar legislation passed a year ago in the Senate, but an odious amendment was attached that gutted D.C. gun control laws, stalling the momentum for voting rights. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District's non-voting House member, said that she reluctantly concluded over these many months that there was no way to scrub the gun language from the bill. Political realities -- the gun lobby's clout, Democrats' pessimism about the fall election, declining incentive for an arrangement that gives a companion seat to Utah -- are cited to buttress the argument that this is the best, perhaps last, chance for voting rights. We have the utmost respect for Ms. Norton; she has worked valiantly over the years to protect the city's gun laws from assaults from the National Rifle Association, so we know how difficult this decision was for her. But, to borrow her own words from March of last year when she decided to yank the bill in hopes of erasing the gun provision: "There is no choice between a vote for American citizens and a completely unrelated and reckless gun bill . . . . That is an absurd exchange that no one would accept." Ensuring public safety is the paramount job of local government. The bill, if it follows provisions approved by the Senate, would remove the District's ban on military-style weapons, repeal the city's firearm registration system, allow teenagers to possess semiautomatic assault rifles and undermine federal anti-gun trafficking laws. In a final insult, it would prohibit local officials from passing any law that could "discourage" gun possession. This is not -- as its disgraced and morally craven author, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), claims -- about restoring Second Amendment rights to the District; the Supreme Court's Heller decision took care of that. This is about undermining a community's reasonable authority, upheld in Heller, to regulate firearms. <Exerpted>
We have the utmost respect for Ms. Norton...
So they get the constitutional guaranteed representation, but have to give up their 2nd amendment rights? I'm not very aware of the status of those living in DC, doesn't sound like a good deal.
Reverse that. They get the constitutionally guaranteed representation, and they get their 2nd Amendment rights back, over the squeal of protest from the DC city government.2nd Amendment rights expanded, DUmmy angst over the "blood in the streets"; sounds like a win-win to me.
