Re-arming DC: Senators want to pack heat in capital

[kskiska]

As a US Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison splits time between her home state, where she is allowed to own practically any weapon invented and can even carry a concealed handgun, and the District of Columbia, where she can’t even keep a .357 Magnum in her house. For 12 years she has managed to abide this without complaint, but apparently she’s had enough. In May, she filed a bill to overturn DC’s gun-control laws, and this week she indicated that she has more than 30 co-sponsors and intends to push it to the floor for a vote in the near future.

The bill would, in one swoop, negate all the gun laws the district has adopted over the past 30 years, including pre-purchase criminal-background checks and bans on semi-automatic weapons and cop-killer bullets. If it passes the Senate, it is expected to breeze through the House, which passed a similar bill last September.

In the press release announcing the bill, Hutchison is quoted saying, apparently without irony: "The rights guaranteed by the Constitution do not end at the borders of Washington, DC."

(snip)

All of which has nothing to do with whether it becomes law. "This bill is primarily designed to allow Republican members of the House and Senate to pose as gun-rights fundamentalists for the benefit of their base," says Anderson.

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http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/04776528.asp