Posted on 01/11/2011 9:04:15 PM PST by Second Amendment First
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is rejecting gun-control legislation offered by the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in response to the weekend shootings of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 19 others in Arizona.
Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) announced plans Tuesday to introduce legislation prohibiting people from carrying guns within 1,000 feet of members of Congress.
King, who has previously called for the removal of illegal guns from the streets, made the announcement alongside New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation’s loudest voices for stricter gun laws.
King said the legislation is not intended only for the safety of government officials but also to protect the public. He said elected officials are not necessarily more important than constituents, but by protecting them in this way, they would feel safer in meeting federal officials at public events.
“The fact is they do represent the people who elect them, and it’s essential, if we’re going to continue to have contact, that the public who are at these meetings are ensured of their own safety,” King said.
King’s legislation got the cold shoulder from Boehner and other Republicans after it was announced.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the Speaker would not support King’s legislation.
The office of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the majority leader is reserving judgment until the King bill is finalized.
“Mr. Cantor believes it’s appropriate to adequately review and actually read legislation before forming an opinion about it,” Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring stated in an e-mail.
The immediate rejection of King’s legislation by Boehner illustrates the difficulty gun-control advocates will face in moving forward with any legislation.
Even Capitol Hill’s most ardent gun reformers don’t anticipate any changes to the nation’s gun laws will be forthcoming in the 112th Congress. They say the combination of a GOP-led House and the powerful gun lobby is simply too formidable to take on over an issue that’s become a proverbial third rail of Washington politics.
“Anything you can get through the gun lobby is going to have little consequence,” Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a longtime supporter of tightening Second Amendment restrictions, said in a phone interview. “I don’t see the likelihood of much progress — I don’t see much hope.”
Aside from King’s proposal, longtime gun-control advocates Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) are working on legislation to prohibit high-capacity ammunition magazines like those allegedly used by Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old college dropout who’s been charged in the Arizona rampage.
Meanwhile, some lawmakers say the public debate about whether incendiary punditry helped ignite the Arizona rampage has overshadowed the more important role that mental health played in the deadly shooting.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said the sometimes violence-laced remarks from Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and other political commentators should be toned down, but were likely not the impetus for the shooting spree.
“Whether you blame them or any of those things on what happened, I don’t think is the issue,” Brown said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Rather, the reportedly erratic behavior of Loughner should have raised red flags about his mental health, Brown said — flags that might have led to treatments that could have prevented the tragic shootings.
“The mental health issues here haven’t been talked about much. We don’t really have much of a mental health safety net in this country. You know, there’s almost nobody watching today,” Brown said.
Although Loughner’s behavior reportedly set off enough alarms that he was expelled from community college and denied entrance into the military, he had no problems buying a hand gun from a local sporting goods store in November .
“This young man should have been [red-flagged] when he was thrown out of that community college,” Brown said. “The mental health safety net’s pretty shredded in Arizona, as it is nationally.”
King’s proposal perplexed some members of Congress, who wondered how it would be implemented because members are so mobile and often encounter individuals without knowledge that a congressional event is taking place.
“I think my concern would be, how do you put a 1,000-foot bubble around a member of Congress and what are you going to do about judges and Cabinet secretaries?” asked Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “If you get past the logistics of it, it would seem to have a ripple effect throughout the upper echelons of appointed and elected officials.”
A spokesman for the National Rifle Association, Andrew Arulanandam, said this week that it would be “inappropriate” for the group to comment on potential reforms so soon after the tragedy.
The tragedy in Tucson does not require a ridiculous and futile response from Congress.
I’m with you -
this wasn’t so much about guns as it was about asserting the “specialness” of the elite ruling class.
Anything you do to give the goverment the power to declare people mentally ill and institutionalize them will soon look like the Soviet “mental health” institutions.
Liberal “experts” are claiming that political incorrectness is insanity and you just witnessed them claim that opposition speech against them is violent and insane. They would have no problem sending you to a mental hospital to be re-educated or lobitmized.
Look what they are doing with the Patriot Act power at the airports now - nude scanning and randomly sexually molesting innocent American men, women and children. This insane abuse comes in the name of non-racism. They are building an unconstitutional KGB citizen spy organization through the power of the Patriot Act.
Our government is not trustworthy with any power over us since we no longer have the constitution being upheld in the courts. We need to restrict the power given to the government to fight terrorism so it is no longer turned against anyone outside Islamic terrorism.
Would hoping someone kicks King in the nuts
be a “call for violence”?
That's because the end-all, be-all goal of liberalism is to make the liberal feel good about themselves, even superior.
Examining any policy beyond the point where a liberal feels good about himself for supporting it is pointless to the liberal espousing the support.
A (R) with at least one testicle?? How was this allowed to happen?
Not only that, but you introduce the Who's-the-top-dog issue here. If Congresspersons aren't supposed to be within 1000 feet of legally owned handguns, it seems to me that most of the logistical burden of making that happen should fall upon the Congressmen, and not their employers. They're the ones that benefit, plus they supposedly work for the rest of us. Why should millions of us be inconvenienced rather than them?
My problems with Cantor go beyond this act of diplomacy on a bill which is so fundamentally flawed it can’t be written in such a manner as to make sense.
His 2009 effort to remake the GOP with his now failed National Council for a New America indicates a great deal about him by looking at those he invited to work with him including Jeb Bush, Romney and Gingrich. Rush rightly branded the whole thing as a scam. Also, his willingness on national TV to throw Rich Lott under the bus when he put on a Nazi uniform for a role he played in the historical reenactment society he was a part of. Lott had played many different roles and putting on this uniform said nothing about his ideology. It’s too bad Cantor wasn’t as sensitive towards Lott as he appears to be with King.
I’ve got a strong suspicion that Cantor is the old breed of Republican who is more a politician than a principled conservative.
The jaded hard-hearted leftists loathe and mock the decency they are void of. They feel nothing but hate, jealousy and rage. They will never understand the tears of the righteous. Jesus wept.
Yippee for Boehner....he and others knew this would be the first thing that was talked about...he sat on that fast. ;o)
His words that they don't ever want to see the people who elected them.
>>(We’re about to find out just how conservative the new Congress is.)<<
They have already showed us that with their Committee appointments.
Please state any actions the new committees have made that you are not happy with. Thank you.
Any such legislation should work in the other direction. Representatives should not be allowed within 1000’ of a firearm. Or at least any that would vote for the nonsense King is proposing.
Since Boehner had already declared he would not support it (before it is even written), should we consider this a shot from Cantor? (Can we say shot in this context anymore?)
There was another one that really got to me too but I can't recall it right now.
“The office of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the majority leader is reserving judgment until the King bill is finalized.
“Mr. Cantor believes it’s appropriate to adequately review and actually read legislation before forming an opinion about it,” Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring stated in an e-mail.”
Just scratched off Cantor from my list of possible Presidential candidates.
King’s proposal makes as much sense as passing a law requiring any potential assassin to send the target of their assassination attempt a letter of warning at least onw week in advance.
That would have as much effect on a nut like the shooter in ths case as would King’s idiotic proposal - and I don’t need to read to know its rubbish - and should Cantor.
King is no friend of the Second Amendment and has been involved in other nitwit anti-gun legislation attempts and successes.
His company of Mayor Bloomberg with him at the time of announcing this idiotic proposal says a great deal about where he is “coming from”.
Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers vowed to enforce the GOP pledge to stopped earmarks and drastically slash governement spending. You have a problem with that?
Rep. Hal’s press release. You have a problem with Hal?
Incoming House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers today announced that the annual operating budget for the House Appropriations Committee will take a 9% cut from last year’s levels. The cut is part of a proposal by Republican leadership in the House to trim the overall budgets of all Members of Congress, committees, and leadership offices. While the average cut will be 5% across these offices, Rogers directed his Committee to take the much larger 9% cut, emphasizing his commitment to significantly reducing government spending.
“Congress must begin immediately to reduce spending, and these budget cuts should start here and now – in our own offices. To demonstrate my strong commitment to slashing spending, reducing our national deficit, and getting our economy on track, I have directed my own Committee budget to be cut by nearly double the amount of reductions proposed for other House offices. This year, the Appropriations Committee will be ground zero for a wide range of reductions across the federal government, and by cutting our own budget first, we are showing we’re willing to lead by example,” Rogers said.
The proposed legislation for the House budget cuts will save taxpayers an estimated $35 million in the first year alone.
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