Posted on 07/07/2005 9:06:18 AM PDT by VRWCmember
WASHINGTON - Barely two weeks after opting against a political slugfest in Texas, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison now finds herself embroiled in a gun fight in the nation's capital.
Hutchison's campaign to repeal Washington's 29-year-old ban on handguns has provoked an angry uproar from the city's mayor, the police chief and much of the local leadership. "Don't tread on D.C." states a terse message to Hutchison on an anti-gun group's Web site.
The proposal, while narrowly focused on Washington, has plunged Congress into a renewed debate over gun control, citizen safety and the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
At the center is Hutchison, the Texas senior senator who recently dropped a potential challenge to Gov. Rick Perry in the 2006 Republican primary and instead decided to seek a presumed easy re-election to a third term.
But by taking on the local power structure in Washington and a nationwide gun-control coalition, the Republican lawmaker has assured that the weeks ahead will be anything but dull.
Last week Hutchison said she believes that the Constitutional provision of a right to keep and bear arms trumps a law prohibiting District of Columbia residents from having handguns. Moreover, she said, it is a matter of personal safety in a city with a high crime rate.
When she came to Washington in 1993, she brought along a .357 Magnum revolver -- the weapon brandished by movie cop "Dirty Harry" -- knowing that she would often be alone several nights a week away from her husband, Ray, a Dallas lawyer. After arriving, she learned of Washington's handgun ban and took her revolver back to Texas.
"Every person ought to be able to protect themselves in their home, and they cannot do that," said Hutchison, who now has two 4-year-old adopted children. "I spend a lot of nights here. I think that should be a right of myself or anyone living here."
Hutchison has drawn on harrowing personal experience in pushing for citizen protection. In the late 1990s, she persuaded Congress to enact federal anti-stalking legislation after disclosing that she had been pursued by a stalker since she began her political career 25 years earlier.
At one point, the stalker, who had worked as a volunteer in her 1972 campaign for the Texas House, broke into her office and rammed an ice pick through the face of her campaign poster. The man was eventually confined to a mental institution.
In her more recent endeavor, Hutchison wants to abolish a 1976 law that gives the District one of the nation's most rigid gun-control standards. The law requires the registration of all firearms and prohibits the sale or possession of handguns. It allowed those who already had handguns to keep them as long as they registered them under the new ordinance.
Residents can own shotguns and rifles but must keep them unloaded and disassembled, or secured with a trigger lock. One seeming anomaly, however, permits loaded firearms at businesses. In an early test of Hutchison's initiative, the House voted last week to strip the provision requiring long guns to be disassembled.
Hutchison sought to repeal the 1976 law during the last session of Congress, winning approval in the House but not in the Senate. Now a third of the Senate is signed on as co-sponsors, including fellow Texas Republican John Cornyn.
The effort is also embraced by the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates who believe the D.C. law is unconstitutional and has done little to curtail crime. But District Mayor Anthony Williams, testifying at a congressional hearing last week, called Hutchison's legislation a "slap in the face to me and to the people who live in my city."
Police Chief Charles Ramsey also weighed in at the hearing, saying that repealing the law would make guns easily available to criminals and reverse a recent downturn in the city's crime rate. Those supporting Hutchison's view insist that the District's gun law prevents people from protecting themselves.
Homicides in the District fell last year to 198, from 248 in 2003, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Over the past three decades, the murder rate has bounced up and down, reaching a peak of 482 in 1991 at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic.
Many District residents are incensed by what they perceive as outside interference. Since the so-called federal city gained home rule authority in the late 1960s, the City Council has been empowered to enact laws, but Congress can oversee and reverse those ordinances.
"The issue is not so much about guns but what right the people of D.C. have regarding their public safety," said Mike Beard, president of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who helped design the 1976 law as an aide to the District's delegate in Congress.
But Hutchison argues that she, too, has a personal stake in the issue. She kept a gun for protection in Dallas and Austin, and "when I got here I found I couldn't have one," she said. "I do think it's the right of everyone."
Yep, we're baffled, too. We're not sure how a Texas paper erred on references to a gun, a cowboy hat and country music. It didn't make our day:
• Clint Eastwood carried a .44 Magnum in his Dirty Harry movie role. The weapon was incorrect Tuesday in an article about Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's attempt to change gun laws in Washington, D.C.
• Bob Dylan was wearing a felt cowboy hat onstage at the Willie Nelson Picnic on Monday. The type of hat was wrong Tuesday in the review. Our Texas sensibilities deluded us into believing that it must've been summer straw.
• Earlier at the picnic, Kinky Friedman made a guest appearance with Asleep at the Wheel. The band was misidentified in the article about the picnic. We should have known that a candidate for Texas governor would not appear on July Fourth with a band known as Cross Canadian Ragweed.
The Startle Gram, the way we locals refer to the Star Telegram, is not really a Texas paper. Milly Ivans is their big name on staff if that give you any clue -- all hat, no cattle Texans. The only reason this rag exists is that the Dallas Managed New, er Dallas Morning News, is not smart enough to figure out the readership. Both have numbers sinking fast.
I'm pleasantly surprised at Hutchison's stand. Nothing like fear to focus the mind.
I beg to differ with you sir:
whenever I read either the StartleGram or the Dallas Morning Spew, I find every evidence of there having been cattle in the vicinity... and I try not to step in it.
Well, that's a start at least.
Now turn around and bend over Mayor Williams, so she can lick you @ss!
"Uh, could I get a little Admin help here to amend that to KICK?? PLease?"
Always review before clicking post.....ALWAYS....LOL
subliminal screwup? ;-)
Having been born in DC, and having had the experience of being mugged in DC (three calls to 911, the police showed up after FIVE hours; the problem is in Police Communications, not usually with the Police).
I now live in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We are allowed to own guns; you can buy one every 30 days unless you have a concealed-carry permit, in which case the 30-day law doesn't apply to you; you can carry unconcealed without a permit and concealed-carry permits are a matter of filling out a form and having proof of a basic gun safety class.
When the DC Police (most of whom are underpaid and in a good deal of danger since most criminals are heavily armed) first switched to the Glock 19, a policewoman's partner stopped the police car so her side was on ice (unknown to both). They were on a call for some crime-in-progress. She had a round chambered, as most police do, but once she opened the door, she put her hand on her gun with her finger on the trigger. When she put her feet on the ice, she lost her balance and shot herself in the leg.
So how do you explain that most civilians (and police officers) tend not to hurt themselves with guns? I lived in DC for several years when I worked in the city. You get so that you don't react to the sound of gunfire on Capitol Hill. It was hard when I moved to Virginia because I wasn't used to NOT hearing gunfire. I've gotten used to it, and I quite enjoy it, even though probably 80%+ of my neighbors also own guns.
Personally, I'd recommend that anyone paying state taxes move to a state that respects your 2nd Amendment rights. Senators and Congressmen and -women are free to move to Virginia, where they may own guns. (Maryland has gotten paranoid about gun ownership.)
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