Her Overwhelming Priority is Voting Rights, Except When It's Not
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) had to choose between getting her constituents voting representation in Congress and denying her constituents' Second Amendment rights. Guess which way the cookie crumbled. Norton is withdrawing the DC Voting Rights Act because of an amendment attached in the Senate requiring District gun control laws to be no stricter than those of the Federal government. The red-in-the-face fuming of the act's supporters is priceless.
From a press release on Norton's website:
Despite her overriding priority for voting rights, Norton believed she had an obligation to expose the unusual public safety dangers posed by the Ensign [gun rights] amendment to eliminate its passage. She held two hearings and alerted high level administration officials and her colleagues to the homeland security dangers of the amendment and asked for their assistance.
DC Council Vice Chairman Vincent Gray called the amendment "onerous and dangerous."
Top honors, though, go to DC Councilman Phil Mendelson (quoted in the same Washington Examiner article as Gray), who obviously lacks the self-awareness that restrains the speech of mere mortals and other gun control advocates:
"It is supremely frustrating that D.C. residents are forced to wait on voting representation because of the NRA's boldfaced attempt to impose its view of the Second Amendment on District residents."
Steve Chapman covered the DC statehood movement for Reason back in February, and Reason's Brian Doherty (author of Gun Control on Trial) wrote about post-Heller gun control in May.
