In response to Saturday’s shooting spree in Tucscon, Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) has announced that he’s planning on introducing legislation to make it illegal for American citizens to knowingly carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress. King told THE WEEKLY STANDARD over the phone this afternoon that his proposal came out of discussions he had with New York police over the weekend. “If [Rep. Giffords] had had a tight security detail with her, could they have stopped this guy?” King says he asked New York cops. “They would say, ‘No, they probably couldn’t have stopped him from shooting her. They probably could have stopped him from shooting most of the rest of the people.’ They said maybe the one way he maybe could have stopped him in advance was if it appeared he had a gun on him … if he had a bulge in his pocket … by whatever movements he made or whatever. They could have gone over and questioned the guy to see if he had a gun. They couldn’t do that in Tucson because you’re allowed to carry a gun.”

King said there would be “reasonable exceptions” to the law. For example, I pointed out that in Tucson on Saturday, a man named Joseph Zamudio was at a nearby Walgreen’s and carrying a handgun when he heard shots ring out. He responded by rushing toward the scene to stop Jared Lee Loughner, who had already been disarmed by on attendee who hit Loughner with a folding chair and another who tackled him. Wouldn’t Zamudio’s actions have been illegal under King’s proposed law? “After the shots were fired?” King replied. “The law’s not written yet, and we are talking about reasonable exceptions,” such as allowing shop owners to keep their weapons in their store that a congressman frequents. “I would say a good faith response to a crime by a person who was not knowingly bringing a gun to an event in the first place, yeah, that would be a reasonable exception.”