D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray denounced legislation that would give the city congressional representation but gut the District’s gun control laws.
“I do not support a bill that would have us give up our right to legislate and have us give up our gun control laws,” Gray said at a Monday news conference. Congress is weighing legislation that would give the District a vote in the House. But an amendment says that the city would have to give up its vigorous anti-gun laws.
Gray’s announcement highlights a clean split among D.C.’s political class. Mayor Adrian Fenty and activists at D.C. Vote have supported the legislation.
The League of Women Voters sided with Gray, as did Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh. Cheh circulated a petition Monday saying that “the gun amendment displays complete contempt for the people of the District of Columbia.”
Fenty is running for re-election and Gray is challenging him. It’s become a near-annual ritual in D.C. to have voting rights legislation introduced, only for it to collapse on procedural grounds. The city’s nonvoting Democratic delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, last year pulled similar legislation because the gun amendment was too much to take. Now she says she’s willing to reconsider it.
“There’s still a lot of work being done on the bill and the congresswoman is still working on the language,” her spokeswoman Sonsyrea Montgomery told the Washington Examiner.
Ilir Zherka, executive director of D.C. Vote, said that his group opposes the gun amendment but is focused on the larger prize, which has eluded advocates for decades. “We’ve exhausted other avenues,” he said. “We have to keep fighting. Our opponents will always threaten us with something.”
Last week, President Obama broke a long silence by endorsing voting rights for the District. D.C.’s restrictive gun laws have long been a target by gun rights advocates.
In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down the city’s gun laws, saying that the Second Amendment guaranteed individuals the right to defend themselves with a firearm.
The court’s decision left open the possibility of “reasonable” gun restrictions, though, and D.C. officials immediately re-passed some of the nation’s most stringent anti-gun laws.
It requires trigger locks, multiple trips downtown to register the weapons, and forbids certain categories of firearms.
