PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Congressman Who Keeps Trying To Gut D.C. Guns Laws Is Now Leading Second Amendment Caucus :: 01/07/2017
Any masochistic Washingtonian who follows the District's treatment on Capitol Hill knows Congressman Thomas Massie, who just became the leader of the Congressional Second Amendment Caucus.
He's the Republican from Kentucky who says he "began fighting big government as a concerned citizen in 2007." But in an M. Night Shyamalan twist, he's also spent multiple congressional terms trying to gut D.C.-specific laws, despite, you know, not representing us in Congress.
Who could forget when, less than a week after 49 people were killed in a mass shooting in Orlando, Massie introduced amendments to must-pass legislation that would prevent D.C. from spending its funds to enforce laws and prevent enforcement of gun-free zones? Massie claimed that he did so with our best interests at heart.
"The only practical way to have prevented this tragedy is by eliminating gun-free zones where security is inadequate to protect law-abiding citizens who are otherwise capable, willing, and endowed (by their Creator with the right) to defend themselves," Massie said in a statement at the time. "I introduced these amendments to reduce the likelihood of a similar tragedy in D.C."
The House Rules Committee ultimately ruled the amendment out of order and it wasn't attached to the bill.
Massie's opinions on gun-free zones didn't change over the recess. Already this term, he's introduced a bill that would repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act, which prohibits unauthorized people from wielding firearms near schools nationwide.
"He fails on two scores," D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton says of the bill. "One, he's messing in somebody else's district, and two, he's dealing with a very sensitive, normally local issue in our country." She also says it appears unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
Massie says he introduced the law because gun-free zones are ineffective. "They make people less safe by inviting criminals into target-rich, no-risk environments,” he said in a statement. “Gun-free zones prevent law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves, and create vulnerable populations that are targeted by criminals.”
But if gun-free zones are so dangerous, Norton asks, why isn't Massie fighting the one that affects him personally—the federal laws that make it illegal to have guns throughout the entire Capitol Complex?
"If he really feels so deeply about it, why would he want to make the Capitol and Capitol Complex buildings off limits [to guns]?" she says, adding that those are "about all that's left, to tell you the truth," in terms of gun-free zones that Massie hasn't gone after. Her office sent along a photo of new signs posted around the Capitol (seen above) that Norton says she's never seen before this legislative term, which clearly state the prohibition on guns there.
In 2014, Massie called the argument a "red herring," because "here in the Capitol we have armed guards at every door and metal detectors. It's an environment that you can't recreate on the streets of Washington D.C., and if you could it might be safe."
We've reached out to Massie's office for comment about the priorities of the Second Amendment Caucus this term, specifically whether he intends to target the laws that keep guns out of the Capitol. Massie's press secretary, Lorenz Isidro, said over email that he'll have more information about the caucus's priorities once it meets and did not provide an update on the congressman's views on his workplace's gun laws.
Norton isn't sure why they've even formed the caucus this term. "I don't know why you would need, given the Republican majority, a second amendment caucus, given that you have a second amendment Republican party," she says.
She will face that party without a floor vote, after the GOP yet again denied a motion to restore it this week. She was able to vote as part of the Committee of the Whole during the 103rd, 110th, and 111th Congress, all of which had a Democratic majority.
"One wonders why it would matter to [Republicans] so much, one little vote—not even a final vote, but an important vote," Norton says. That's because it would have allowed her to vote on amendments and riders, the form that many D.C.-focused measures take.
She acknowledges that, with a fully GOP-led government, "D.C. is at greater risk," but doesn't attribute all of it to President-elect Donald Trump, whose views about District issues remain unclear.
"Frankly, the damage that is done is done before it ever gets to the White House," Norton says. "Last Congress, we had to defeat or block eight attempts [at overturning D.C. gun laws]. We had to try and find allies in the House and Senate. Basically, the House will always do the bad thing and you have to go to the Senate."
