Wrong direction, as usual

The Washington Post has an article by Mary Beth Sheridan and Paul Duggan about the DC bill:

Supporters of the D.C. vote bill expressed optimism yesterday that the legislation would be stripped of an amendment that would turn the nation's capital into one of the easiest places in America to own a gun. Senate Republicans added the gun amendment to the bill just before it was approved Thursday by the chamber. District of Columbia officials call the measure a public-safety threat. The House is expected to pass its version of the bill next week without any gun language. The differences between the bills will have to be hashed out in a conference between the chambers.
"That's why you have conferences. I'm sure there will be an effort to fix this," said Tom Davis, the former Republican congressman from Virginia who was the original architect of the bill. He said the legislation appeared to have enough support to pass without the gun amendment attached.
The House vote, expected Wednesday, could mark the first time in three decades that a D.C. voting-rights bill cleared both chambers. The measure would expand the House by two seats: one for the District and another for the next state due to receive an additional representative based on population. That would go to Republican-leaning Utah for the next few years, offsetting the Democratic gain from the District. President Obama has indicated that he will sign the bill. It is widely expected to face a court challenge, however.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said he considered the gun amendment "disappointing, but not fatal." He spoke yesterday after he and other members of D.C. vote advocacy groups met with House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, a supporter of the bill. "Certainly the leadership in both the House and Senate is committed to getting a D.C. voting rights bill, and getting a bill without a gun amendment, if possible," Henderson said. He added that his group is urging legislators to pass the bill without the gun language. Hoyer branded the gun amendment "inappropriate and wrong", telling the Politics Program on WTOP: "I hope it won't be in the final product."
What could complicate negotiations on the gun amendment is the strong support it received in the Senate. It passed 62 to 36, winning one more vote than the D.C. vote bill. Democrats from pro-gun states such as Virginia supported the measure, as did most Republicans. Senate staff will have to "feel out how hard people want to push on this" gun issue in the negotiations, said one aide on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which handled the bill in the Senate. "There's a lot of behind-the-scenes things that could happen," said the aide, who was not authorized to comment on the record. Senate officials, for example, could agree to bring up the gun issue at another point in exchange for dropping it from the D.C. vote bill. The amendment is similar to a gun bill that passed the House in the last session of Congress.
Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, predicted that the amendment would be removed in conference because Democrats don't want it. The amendment drew widespread support, he said, because "people don't want to vote against the National Rifle Association." But, he added, if the amendment was dropped, legislators could approve the bill and still get credit for their pro-gun stance in the earlier vote. "You can have your cake and eat it, too," he said.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from D.C., said she met yesterday with House leadership about the bill. When asked about the gun amendment, she said, "I intend to have a bill that is acceptable to the people of the District of Columbia."
Before June, when the Supreme Court struck down the city's 32-year-old handgun ban, the District's firearms control laws were among the nation's toughest. The amendment, in addition to abolishing nearly all of the city's gun regulations, specifies that the District "shall not have the authority to enact laws or regulations that discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms".
"The only thing it seems to leave alone are the criminal laws we have on the carrying of a firearm in public," said D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles. "It looks like it squashes everything else, including registration."
The D.C. Council and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty approved municipal legislation after the Supreme Court ruling that allows ownership of handguns in the city, but with restrictions. Nickles said yesterday that he thinks the rules are "consistent with the latitude given by the Supreme Court to regulate in this area". Residents whose backgrounds qualify them to own guns are allowed to keep revolvers or semiautomatic handguns in their homes or places of business but must register them with police. A resident who kept a gun loaded and unlocked would be subject to prosecution if a child got hold of the weapon.
Echoing a sentiment voiced by congressional supporters of the amendment, an NRA spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam, said yesterday that the city's handgun rules "are way over the top. It makes it as difficult as possible for law-abiding people to be able to have a firearm for self-defense".
If the amendment became law, District residents would remain subject to federal firearms laws, which set minimum age requirements for gun ownership (18 for rifles, 21 for handguns) and ban gun possession by people who have been convicted of felonies or domestic violence or have been found mentally incompetent by a court. Unlike the 50 states, however, the District could be prohibited from expanding on the federal laws to toughen its firearms restrictions, Nickles said. For example, 26 states, including Maryland and Virginia, have laws requiring safe storage for guns. Virginia, Maryland, and California have laws limiting buyers to one handgun purchase a month. A dozen states, including Maryland, require handgun owners to register their weapons with authorities or obtain licenses to possess them.

Rico says the District needs to join the rest of the country and get with the Second Amendment...