Colbert King writes about Marco Rubio’s determination to get rid of D.C.’s tough gun control law.
King asks, why not abolish gun control in the Capitol if that’s the way to make everyone safe? The Capitol has a gun control ban that is absolute.
After all, nowhere is the lawful exercise of the Second Amendment, as Rubio and the NRA define it, more infringed upon than at the U.S. Capitol. Congress’s restrictions leave no wiggle room. NO GUNS ALLOWED EXCEPT FOR AUTHORIZED LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENTS.
According to rules of the Architect of the Capitol: “The following items are strictly prohibited in the Capitol, including the Capitol Visitor Center: . . . Guns, replica guns, ammunition and fireworks . . . electric stun guns, martial arts weapons or devices.” That’s right. If you are a law-abiding citizen, have passed a background check, received firearm training, have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, carry a loaded gun and want to visit your senator or representative, or sit in the House or Senate gallery, or eat in the cafeteria, you simply cannot.
How can Rubio and the gun rights movement let that be? Their whole premise is that the power of self-defense rests with the people, and that, as the NRA preaches, “no person is left to depend solely on the state’s good graces for his or her very life.” So why limit the power of self-defense to D.C. residents?
Shouldn’t those powers be bestowed upon our fellow Americans who visit Congress? It’s not as if the Capitol complex is immune from gunplay.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a bogus non issue. Instead of concentrating on universal health care and strengthening Social Security, we have these right wing GOP deplorables yelping about the red herring called gun rights. As if there aren’t enough guns in this country, as if it isn’t all too easy to get guns. It’s a red meat issue that plays well to the dupes who voted for Trump. They don’t have Obama to beat up on anymore but still they are asking for more guns, more lax gun laws. For 8 years we heard that Obama was going to take your guns away. Really?
What an amazing and excellent idea!
When members of the House or Senate disagree, they can just whip out their pistols and start firing at each other. How utterly American.
If I may correct your last sentence NW: How utterly Amurikan!
????
Amurikan is my way of saying ignorant and pseudo-patriotic Americans who believe in the “American Exceptionalism”-“We’re #1 and screw anyone else who doesn’t believe as we do” meme/doctrine.
At a minimum should not our elected representatives be permitted to carry a weapon in the event of a grizzly bear or other wild animal attack in the capital building? I am surprised Senator Rubio has not thought of this. He should sit down with Secretary Designate DeVos for a full briefing on this important issue. And couldn’t our President simply sign an executive order rescinding the capital building weapons ban so that security for our lawmakers is enhanced pending a thorough investigation of any and all reports of grizzly bear sightings in Washington, DC.
Beat me to the punch, GST. Didn’t read all the comments before posting mine.
Still good to know I’m not alone in my reasonable fear of urban grizzlies on the prowl.
While the urban grizzlies are indeed a concern, the suburban grizzly moms are the ones that you really need to sorry about.
“Suburban Grizzly Mom’s”
Suburban grizzly mom
Is really quite a worry
Especially for Rahm
And Arne, who are quarry
At the Texas Statehouse there is a special line for people carrying concealed guns, so they can go around the metal detectors that everyone else is screened by. No doubt Rubio is intending something like that. In other words, a slippery slope argument will not work on the gun nuts, they want to slide all the way down the slope.
Somehow I doubt you will ever see a special line for people packing guns at the Capitol
Wouldn’t have to worry about any grizzlies in DeVos’s Dept of Ed if all were allowed to carry a gun there.
But, er, what about the all-important issue of what to do with nature-abiding grizzlies with concealed weapons permits?
Imagine an innocent grizzly going about its own divinely-protected predatory business suddenly being confronted by someone weighing 100 lbs. wearing a pussy hat and waving a placard in its face with something as provocative as “GUN VIOLENCE IS A WOMEN’S ISSUE”?
You may laugh, sir, but the only way to stop a bad human with an anti-American sign is a good grizzly with a BIGLY gun.
Or so it might say somewhere on the NRA’s website…
😎
Does Amway sell guns?
To answer your last question, Diane: YES!
HE’s NUTS!
We must sadly acknowledge that the problem goes far beyond him and involves all those that enable and support him . Deplorable was an appropriate description the shame is it was delivered by the wrong messenger and then retracted when it should have been doubled down on .
It has never been clear to me to what “well regulated militia” those people who gun down so many of our citizens belong.
Do people really wish to dispense with our military as it is now and go back to the “well regulated militias” which were utilized for defense when the 2nd amendment was written?.
Too, since guns make us so safe why not just dispense with our police and give everyone a gun to protect themselves and their property.
Yes, and while we are at it why not dispense with our fire departments, the other government services like building roads and bridges. Government is the problem not the solution us the battle cry..
The 2nd amendment bozo’s think the government is going to go, door-to-door, to take their guns because that’s what the right wing media tells them. The bozo scenario development, doesn’t extend to reality. The government will use high, aerial armed drones, as an efficient means of killing those who wield weapons in uprisings.
The bozo’s guns will provide no protection from government forces. And, marauders looking for food, won’t be stopped by an armed homeowner. The hungry have nothing to lose. My hope is that the 99%, first, storm the palaces of America’s richest 0.1%. Historically, that’s what has occurred.
It’s the same hypocrisy, at Ohio’s capitol. “The 99% are made safer, by toting guns to use against each other”, according to the contrived argument of the politicians. They, however, are safer with a gun prohibition, in the state buildings.
Could be a problem with the ratio of good guys with guns v bad guys with guns at the Capitol.
“Rubio’s Cube”
Rubio’s Cube
Is hard to solve
A toothpaste tube
Without a valve
A bottle of Klein
That’s inside-out
For finest whine
Without a doubt
SomeDAM Poet: you, sir, are correct.
Like rheephormsters and their kith and kin of all sizes, shapes and colorations, he is a member of the “whine patrol.”
😎
Also, a whine connoiseur.
And I think “inner tube without a valve is better”
Being a gun owner, target and clay bird shooter and occasional hunter, for me the idiots who feel a need to run around with a chambered round in any situation other than when they are planning to pull the trigger are selfish, paranoid bastards who endanger the lives of others. They are misusing their gun rights by endangering others. There is no need whatsoever to be toting a loaded weapon around in the public sphere. Hell, we’ve not invited a person or two back to deer camp because they consistently insisted on bringing a loaded weapon (we expect and demand all weapons to be unloaded until the hunter gets to the hunting area) into the house, tent, communal area. It’s called safe gun handling.
These paranoid people’s imagined “right” to defend themselves from imagined horrors show that they have no clue as to what the real threats to their existence are. I know many women (men that I know don’t seem to have that “need”) who have gone the concealed carry route and believe they are therefore safer for carrying around a handgun that is loaded. None of them are adequately trained to use a weapon in a violent social situation.
Partly I blame the instructors who are making a killing monetarily on falsely telling clients they are safer carrying around a loaded weapon. Another part is the fear instilled in people by the media aggrandizing/highlighting violence making it appear that there is more danger than is actually warranted. And partly I blame legitimate gun owners and users who haven’t done enough to counteract that danger narrative and the false sense of security that is hyped by the conceal carry crowd.
It is not a matter of restricting gun ownership, that cat is already out of the bag and will never be caught much less stuffed back into the bag. It is a matter restricting ignorant selfish nutwads from being allowed to conceal or open carry in public away from the legitimate hunting and shooting areas where a weapon can be safely and properly used.
But, your well-stated view, won’t sell more guns, as you noted. More guns enable, people (mostly men) who lack impulse control, to ruin their lives and those of their victims.
As Warren Zevon said “when you are stuck between Iraq and a hard place, send lawyers, guns and money”.
I never knew what he meant before. But I think he meant send someone like Rubio, cuz only they will know how to fix the problem.
Zevon was very astute (and prescient, talking about Iraq decades before the war and all)