Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., called for a revision of the Second Amendment during Wednesday’s “sit-in” on the House floor, which has shut down the House while Democrats demand a vote on gun control legislation.
“The Second Amendment needs some changing, because Americans don’t agree with it and we’ve had it,” Doyle shouted on the House floor. “We’re not going to watch any more people in this country get slaughtered and do nothing.”
House Democrats are occupying the well of the floor in order to demand a vote on gun control legislation, such as a ban on weapons sales to people on the terror watch list.
They’ve vowed not to leave until House Republicans grant a vote on that bill, making the “sit-in” a rough approximation of a Senate filibuster. They were joined briefly on the House floor by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Murphy, who staged a talking filibuster for the same purpose last week.
The move put House Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership team in a bind. They can ask the sergeant-at-arms to clear the floor, according to another House source familiar with the rules, although that would be procedurally awkward given that they’re technically in recess.
But the politics of that are even more uncomfortable: Republicans don’t want the spectacle of the sergeant-at-arms removing Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights icon, from the House floor.
“The House cannot operate without members following the rules of the institution, so the House has recessed subject to the call of the chair,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong told the Examiner.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., spurned the prayer offered by the House chaplain by saying, “Let’s have a real prayer,” which she asked Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to lead.
“To the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent … we pause to ask forgiveness for our many transgressions,” Clyburn said. “And to say how much we feel, how greatly we ache, for those lives lost, those families destroyed, those communities that have been broken, because of our refusal to speak up, to stand up, and [demand] just laws to ensure the safety of our people.”
They have also made comments that, under normal rules, would put a member at risk of being ejected from the House floor and banned from speaking for the rest of the day for impugning the character of other House members. Waters, for instance, claimed that Republicans don’t actually care about the Second Amendment.
“You’re doing what you’re doing because you don’t have the guts to stand up to the gun lobby,” she said following the prayer.
