Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | 4:46 p.m.
Sun Coverage
WASHINGTON -- Nevada's two senators played a pivotal role in today's quiet defeat of a long-championed effort to give residents of the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress.
Advocates of the District voting rights bill decided to postpone this week's House vote on the measure after being unable to accept pro-gun provisions tacked onto the bill.
Republican Sen. John Ensign all but doomed the voting bill when he attached an amendment that would overturn the District's strict laws against assault rifles and firearms. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also a strong Second Amendment advocate, led the bill's passage from the Senate last year with the gun provision.
As the House prepared to take up the legislation this week, advocates of D.C. voting rights said they could not bear the gun provisions, as well as new gun measures being proposed in the House, and decided instead to temporarily shelve the voting rights bill.
"This was the most promising opportunity in a generation to achieve our goal," said a statement from DC Vote, an organizing promoting voting rights in the distict. "DC Vote believes the gun amendment is a prime example of why we need voting rights in DC - to prevent intrusions such as this."
Ensign and Reid's roles have not gone unnoticed. The Washington Post, in its lead editorial on Sunday, said no bill would be better than this one with the gun provisions.
The Post took note of Ensign, the gun amendment's "disgraced and morally craven author," and said Reid "enabled -- indeed, voted for -- this dangerous gun measure."
The District has one non-voting member of of the House and is seeking full representation similar to the states. The bill would have offered a full seat to the Democratic-leaning District as well as one to Republican-heavy Utah, which narrowly missed adding a seat during the last reapportionment.
Don't give the Democrats a lifetime seat in the House with D.C.. Just wait until the Chicago case clears the Supreme Court and the restrictions will fall.
D.C. is not a state, I don't see why a city should get a specific vote when other cities don't.
I like the idea of having even more guns in D.C. - it just might make the people more safe from the thieves in Congress - LOL!
There are no guns in DC now?
Reid is not all bad.
He placed gun rights above the rights of DC citizens getting full representative access to Congress.
Good for Reid.
He supported Nevada's gay ban on Marriage.
Good for Reid.
He supported DOMA which protects Nevada from recongizing gay marriages from other states.
He voted for the Iraq War.
Good for Reid.
He supports Obama's escalation of the Afghan war.
Good for Reid.
Keep up the good work, Reid.
If where you live "PERMANENT ADDRESS" dos not have a star on the American flag then you don't get to vote.
D.C. has some of the most strict gun laws in the US and yet they have one of the highest violent crime rates of any major city. Gun bans have been proven to be ineffective multiple times. I haven't read the provisions, but they didn't sound like a bad thing.
It really is a shame that groups like the Brady Campaign use fear-mongering tactics with no real numbers to back them up. This bill would have been good for D.C. in every way but was shot down by illogical emotions.
The license plate motto on the D.C. vehicles read "No taxation Without Representation".
Ironic, isn't it, that a district with a population larger than many states, our nation's capitol of all places, actually takes U.S. citizen's tax money and doesn't give them a representative vote.
What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong.
On principle, this is VERY wrong.
Gee, where are the tea-baggers when you really need them?
Stuart & Robert Wyman-Cahall
Las Vegas, NV 89142