CSGV TELLS TEXANS TO BUTT OUT OF DC GUN POLICY

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ^ | May 19, 2005 | CSGV

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

WASHINGTON – Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz today accused a pair of Texas lawmakers of “playing cheap political games” with the District of Columbia’s gun laws at the expense of democracy in the nation’s capital.

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, held a news conference to announce the introduction of the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2005, which would repeal the city’s gun laws, in the Senate.

“The citizens of the District of Columbia should have the power to decide by democratic means whether and how firearms will be regulated in the city where they live,” Horwitz said. “The names of the people pushing to repeal Washington’s gun laws have never appeared on a ballot in the District of Columbia, yet they feel free to tell DC what to do.”

Last September, the U.S. House passed an earlier version of the bill, introduced by Reps. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and Mike Ross (D-Ark.), on a 250-171 vote, but the Senate did not act on the proposal. November elections have emboldened the gun lobby to push the issue more aggressively, and Souder and Ross reintroduced the House bill in March

“The District of Columbia Personal Protection Act is perhaps the most important example of how Congress continues to trample on the rights of DC voters to make basic decisions about their government whenever they find it politically convenient,” Horwitz said, noting that DC residents do get voting representation in either house of Congress.

Sen. George Allen, the chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, appeared at the press conference, and Horwitz said he does not think it is a coincidence that Hutchison is preparing to run for governor of Texas.

“George Allen is going to encourage politicians whose constituents live thousands of miles away to monkey around with DC’s gun laws as an easy way to score points with the gun lobby,” Horwitz said. “This is a transparent attempt to pander to a special interest group without having to worry about the people who have to live in DC.”

“If Kay Hutchison is so concerned about crime, there’s plenty of work to do back home in Texas, which has the twelfth highest violent crime rate of all states and has two of the ten most dangerous large cities in the country,” he said.

Morgan Quitno Press, which compiles statistical comparisons of cities and states, ranks Texas No. 12 in violent crime (table at www.morganquitno.com/CR05sam2.pdf). It rated DC No. 2, Dallas No. 5, and Houston No. 9 on its list of most dangerous cities with more than than 500,000 people (table at www.morganquitno.com/cit05pop.htm).

[MeekOneGOP]

"Citizens need to be armed
to protect themselves against
a tyrannical government."

-- Senator Ted Kennedy

---

Poor Mary Jo wasn't armed.

Mary Jo Kopechne

Those young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died, while the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.

Neither does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier -- for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Or why the US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on tests.

As they listen to the Democrats' "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don't know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town, an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape.

It's time for Republicans to state unabashedly that they will no longer "go along with the gag" when it comes to Uncle Ted's rants about deception and moral turpitude inside the Bush White House. And if the Republicans don't, let's do it ourselves by passing this forgotten disgrace around the Internet to wake up memories of what a fraud and fake Teddy really is.

Senator Teddy, wearing his controversial neck brace, leaves St. Vincent's
Church with his wife, Joan, after the funeral Mass for Mary Jo Kopechne.

[Redbob]

"'bout time some folks came into your neck of the woods and took the fight to you like you marxist/liberal/gungrabbin, constitution perverting folks have been trying to do to us all these years."

Exactly.

The only way we can regain and preserve our liberties is to go on the offensive;
for too many years defenders of gun rights have operated only on the defensive, just hoping through compromise to minimize the losses.

That's given us the Brady Bill and other travesties.
Now it's time to work on getting some rights back.

[Jeff Head]

Amen. But I would word it as follows.

Now it's time to work on getting those unalienable, God-given rights that we already have, and always have had, once again recognized in law as they should be.

We never lost the rights, just the law's recognition of them and the resulting infringements.

[KingNo155]

Josh Horwitz was never elected to office so by his standard he should also butt out.