Eleanor Holmes Norton Cites Obama’s Safety in Call for Gun-Free Zone
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called on the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service to create a perimeter around President Obama, wherever he is, in which all guns are banned.
The restriction would conflict with the “open carry” laws of several states, including Virginia, New Hampshire and Arizona. Norton does not have a vote in Congress but serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.
The White House countered Norton’s view on state vs. federal laws. “There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally. Those laws don’t change when the president comes to your state or locality,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday.
Also, the Secret Service responded that the president has never been in any danger by armed citizens at town-hall meetings because they were not near him.
Meanwhile, Norton told Fox 5 news in an interview, “I’m worried about a rash of shooting — not by terrorists — but by crazies.”
She called for new federal restrictions in a statement Thursday, saying that it is in response to “reports, photos, and videos of people carrying guns outside of an Obama town-hall meeting in Arizona earlier this week.” Arizona has open-carry laws, meaning it’s legal to carry an unconcealed firearm in public.
Norton, though, told Fox 5, “Certainly you don’t want to have people around the president openly carrying weapons and saying, ‘I can do this and you can do nothing about it.’ ”
Norton has long battled against D.C. gun-rights advocates and the NRA. The District of Columbia government had banned handguns, but the law was struck down by the Supreme Court last year as a violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Norton is also fighting for passage of a D.C. Voting Rights bill, which would give the District a vote in Congress. The legislation is stalled because of the Ensign amendment, which would make it easier to own a gun in the District. In her statement, Norton said, “Both in the courts and in Congress, beginning with the violation of D.C.’s home rule right to enact its own gun-safety laws, the NRA is on a national gun-carrying campaign.”
Norton said a restriction on guns around the president “is particularly necessary in the nation’s capital, where recently filed litigation seeks to overturn D.C. law in order to allow residents and visitors to carry concealed guns in public.”
Granted, I think carrying guns to a protest about health care reform is unnecessary and actually looks ridiculous. These people are self-defeating because carrying an enormous AR-15 at a town hall distracts from the actual issue — a protest against government-controlled health care.
But the Secret Service is fully capable of protecting the president, and the White House has stated the protesters are within their rights and are not a danger to the president.
As a District resident, I was pleased that the courts finally overturned the ban on my constitutional right to bear arms. Eleanor Holmes Norton, my elected representative in Congress — whose vote doesn’t count and shouldn’t — is disingenuous to say that a ban on guns around the president is about his safety. The truth, I believe, is it’s about her back-door effort to ban guns in D.C.
How much do you want to bet that she proposes the gun-ban radius around the president be the exact distance from the White House to the District’s borders?
