The Right to Arm Public Housing (NYT) [View All]

[friendly_iconoclast]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/opinion/16thu3.html?_r=1

July 16, 2009
Editorial
The Right to Arm Public Housing
Congress continues to do the gun lobby’s lethal bidding, delivering a bipartisan boost in a House committee to a reckless proposal that would allow residents of public housing projects to keep guns in their homes. The measure would endanger projects in major cities that have adopted the common sense precaution of declaring public housing to be no-gun zones.

The gun amendment was perversely attached to a much-needed measure widening access to Section 8 subsidized housing for families hard pressed in the current recession. Why these families should be forced to face this latest duck-and-cover mischief from the gun lobby is incomprehensible. Nevertheless, the gun amendment was approved 38 to 31 in the House Financial Services Committee, with 13 Democrats once more opting for the gun lobby’s zealotry over the cause of public safety.

It’s urgent that the gun amendment be stripped from the final measure, but do not expect bold or principled action from this Congress on this issue. It burdened credit card reform with an irrelevant amendment allowing visitors to carry loaded guns in national parks. President Obama signed it into law, showing no appetite to take on the gun lobby. Similarly, lawmakers poisoned the historic measure to grant the District of Columbia a vote in the House — yielding to a vindictive amendment striking at the city’s home-rule power to control gun traffic....

....Far from authorizing the addition of guns to all the problems already rampant in public housing, Congress should be dealing with the national embarrassment that individuals barred from airlines on the terrorist watch list are free to shop for firearms. Senator Frank Lautenberg has a proposal to let the attorney general block this insanity. Security-minded Americans, however, better not count on action by this timorous Congress.