Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., on Monday called House Speaker Paul Ryan “a handmaiden of the gun lobby” because he is refusing to bring up two Democratic-favored gun-control bills.
“We had two simple bills and we begged the speaker of this House to allow us to take up those bills to debate those bills, to have them voted up or down,” Water said on the House floor. “The speaker won’t do it because, as it has been described, he too is a handmaiden of the gun lobby along with all of the other members, afraid to come and represent and deal with the tough issues that confront us.”
Waters and other Democrats wanted to vote on a bill preventing people from buying guns if they’re on the federal government’s “no fly” list, and another bill requiring universal background checks.
Waters also claimed members of Congress are “intimidated by the gun lobby … and so what they do is they hide behind the Constitution and they will tell you that they are defending their constitutional rights” when opposing gun control proposals.
House Democrats held a sit-in in June that forced the House to shut down, as they protested the lack of a gun vote. Republicans tried to bring up a vote last week on legislation that included a compromise proposal to delay gun purchases for people on a federal terrorism watchlist, but that bill ran into trouble among Republicans, and it was pulled.
Waters said Republicans are incorrectly saying Democrats want to ban all guns.
“None of us, in what we sat in about, talked about taking away anybody’s guns,” she said. “What we said was we’ve got to make sure that guns are not in the hands of people who should not have them.”
