Shootings reverberate in D.C.

What do recent mass-murder shootings in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state have to do with Utah gaining an extra U.S. House seat next year? Maybe everything.

They have become a new focus to possibly removing a gun-rights amendment that has blocked a bill to give the heavily democratic District of Columbia a House seat with full voting rights, and give heavily Republican Utah a fourth House seat as a political counterweight.

That bill passed the Senate in February but has stalled in the House because of an amendment that the Senate added that would repeal tight gun control laws in D.C. ?— including its ban on semiautomatic weapons.

D.C. officials do not want to pass the bill with that amendment in place, but have been unable to muster enough support to remove it in the House — largely because of opposition from the National Rifle Association, which says current D.C gun laws are an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms.

So D.C.'s non-voting delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, launched a new offensive, saying that recent mass-murder shootings show the wisdom of D.C. gun-control laws to help take guns off the street, and are an argument for removing the Senate gun-rights amendment.

"In just 25 days between March 10 and April 5, 53 people were killed in mass shootings in Alabama, California, North Carolina, New York and Washington State," she said in a press release this week.

"It would be foolish and foolhardy to enable the same consequences here, where the president and his family, Cabinet members, members of Congress and foreign and national dignitaries are in full view every day, and where 600,000 residents live," she said.

The comments followed a violent week where a man killed 13 people at a Binghamton, N.Y. community center; a man killed his five children and himself in Washington state; and three police officers in Pittsburgh were killed as they responded to a domestic violence call.

"How many members know that the Ensign (gun-rights) amendment would eliminate all gun laws in the nation's capital, making the capital the most permissive gun jurisdiction in the U.S.?" Norton asked.

She held a hearing last week looking at the possible results of that amendment on homeland security issues in Washington, D.C., which she said is needed because House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has said the D.C. voting rights bill will likely go to the House floor after the current Easter recess.