4th seat stalled by D.C. gun fight

A shootout over tight gun control laws in Washington, D.C., is again stalling, for at least another week, a bill that would give Utah a fourth U.S. House seat and give D.C. a House seat with full voting rights.

Congressional Quarterly reported Tuesday that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the bill is "not likely to come up this week" as once planned because of fights over gun control. Those fights also prevented originally scheduled House debate last week.

Hoyer said leaders continue to try to resolve a battle over a proposed amendment that would repeal many of D.C.'s strict gun control laws, including erasing its ban on semiautomatic weapons and dropping its criminal penalties for possessing unregistered firearms.

The Senate last month added such an amendment when it passed its version of the bill. House leaders said they hoped to avoid that, and then negotiate with the Senate to drop the amendment from final legislation.

However, allies of the National Rifle Association have strong support for adding the amendment in the House, and may be able to force a vote and pass it. Hoyer said, however, supporters "may not be possible to pass the bill" if the gun provisions are added. So he vowed to keep working to resolve the conflict, and predicted the bill will pass eventually this Congress.

"We will pass the D.C. voting rights bill through the House. And a bill will go to the president," he told Congressional Quarterly.

Meanwhile, the lobbying group DC Vote says it continues to push hard for the bill and dropping the gun control amendment, including recently persuading more than 4,000 people to call Congress in one day to support the bill.

Ilir Zherka, head of the group, said in an e-mail, "DC Vote remains committed to passing the DC Voting Rights Act and is working tirelessly to urge members of Congress to reject all harmful amendments."

Senate passage of the gun rights amendment miffed the D.C. City Council so much that it launched an effort to begin studying gaining statehood, figuring that would help prevent Congress from interfering with its local ordinances (and also bring two Senate seats beyond the House seat it is seeking now).

The current bill would permanently expand the House by two members beginning in the 2010 election. One would go to heavily Democratic D.C. — which currently has only a non-voting delegate in the House — and the other would go to heavily Republican Utah as a political counterweight until after results from the next Census.

Critics, such as Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, say the bill is unconstitutional because the Constitution allows House seats only for states, and D.C. is not a state.

Supporters, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, say it is constitutional. He says the Constitution also allows such things as federal taxation, jury trials and interstate commerce only for residents of "states," but courts have ruled that includes D.C.

E-MAIL: lee@desnews.com