Rubio, Jordan Launch New Attack on D.C. Gun Laws, Home Rule

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – March 27, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced that Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) today have introduced the National Rifle Association (NRA)-backed District of Columbia gun bill that forced Norton to pull the D.C. House Voting Rights Act from the House floor in April 2010. The bill would wipe out almost all of the D.C.’s local gun safety laws, including its ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines and its registration requirements, and prohibit D.C. from passing gun laws in the future.

“It should shock no one that Senator Rubio, who is widely expected to soon announce a run for President, would try to raise his national profile and conservative bona fides, but they should be shocked to hear that he would try to use our local jurisdiction and laws to violate his own support for the principle of local control,” Norton said. “Such bullying is not very presidential. It is particularly ironic, though, that Representative Jordan, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, whose mission it is to reduce the size of the federal government, would use the big foot of the federal government to interfere in the local affairs of a local government. If Senator Rubio and Representative Jordan want to remove restrictions on guns, why do they not offer a bill to eliminate the federal gun restrictions that affect their own constituents—such as bans on guns in federal buildings, and post offices—where there would be no violation of their often professed federalism principles?”

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of District’s ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines, and a federal district court has upheld the city’s gun registration requirements. Norton defeated every effort last Congress to block or overturn D.C.’s gun laws, including Massie’s House-passed amendment to the fiscal year 2015 D.C. Appropriations bill that would have blocked D.C. from spending its local funds to enforce its local gun laws.

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