D.C. voting bill and Ensign Amendment not dead yet?

The possibility that Washington D.C. might, via the Ensign Amendment, be forced to recognize the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment (to the degree that those rights are recognized in most other parts of the country, anyway) has the shrieking hysterics going at full volume.

Attorney General Peter Nickles said presidential and other motorcades will be exposed to high-powered arms fire if the District’s gun laws are stripped out by Congress.

“The proposed Ensign Amendment, which among other things, would prohibit the District of Columbia from enacting legislation on firearms, would have a serious public safety impact for the entire region,” Nickles wrote in a recent letter to D.C.’s nonvoting congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

David, as usual, gets straight to the heart of the matter.

Because apparently the Heller decision made shooting politicians legal or something. And the only thing that's held the snipers back so far has been the DC gun ban.

We're hearing rumblings again about the Ensign Amendment, after weeks of it being off the radar screen, because the D.C. voting bill to which it was attached was stalled (precisely because of the Ensign Amendment).

Now, though, there's talk that the anti-gun wing of the Democratic Party is on the retreat, leaving the party willing to trade D.C.'s still draconian gun laws for a voting representative for D.C. in the U.S. House.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admits that Democrats are conceding the gun issue to Republicans for now.

Republicans have been increasingly using pro-gun amendments to throw a wrench into Democratic legislation, attaching amendments to seemingly unrelated bills allowing for expanded gun carrying privileges in national parks.

[ . . . ]

Republicans have slowed down a D.C. voting rights bill using the tactic, though a credit card bill with an amendment allowing for expanded ability to carry guns in national parks is widely expected to pass both houses.

Hoyer vowed Tuesday that the D.C. voting rights bill would pass "one way or another."

"It's gonna happen," he said.

That article was mostly about the Coburn Amendment to the credit card industry reform bill, but the clear implication is that Democratic Party leadership has become willing to swallow advances in gun rights, in order to get what they want.

I won't go deeply into the question of whether or not gun rights advocates should be happy about the Constitution being abused, when that abuse is the vehicle that leads to a window dressing "victory" for gun rights, but it's a serious question. Personally, I believe we (gun rights advocates) hold the Constitutional high ground, and I see it as reckless to voluntarily surrender so much as a square millimeter of that ground.

Regardless of where one stands on that question, this will be something to watch.