CCRKBA Urges Sen. Reid to Allow Senate Vote on District Gun Law

Business Wire, Sept 24, 2008

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is today calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to allow a House-approved bill on the District of Columbia's gun law to face an immediate Senate vote.

"Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and 46 of her colleagues have asked Sen. Reid to do this before the end of the 110th Congress," noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, "but we think this vote needs to occur before the Nov. 4 election. It should be openly debated and subjected to a roll call vote.

"Senator Reid has provided cover to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the past on a gun vote," he noted, "and that's got to stop right now. Particularly, Sen. Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, need to cast an on-the-record vote - and I don't mean 'present' - on a gun rights bill.

"Ever since the Supreme Court struck down the District's handgun ban on the grounds that it violated the Second Amendment's protection of an individual civil right to keep and bear arms," Gottlieb continued, "Obama, Clinton and recently Biden have cleverly danced around the gun rights issue, claiming to support the Second Amendment. It's time for Harry Reid to give them all a chance to prove it."

Gottlieb, co-author of the recently-published These Dogs Don't Hunt: The Democrats' War on Guns, said American gun owners deserve more than lip service on the Second Amendment from political leaders who hobnob with Hollywood anti-gunners and who take money from far-left gun control extremists. There is no better time, he said, than in the seven weeks before national elections for all Senate Democrats to show American gun owners where they truly stand on firearm civil rights.

"Harry Reid is gambling that he can ignore this issue and it will just go away," Gottlieb stated. "But we are going to remind America's 90 million voting gun owners every day that Reid stalls a vote on this bill. We will remind gun owners that thousands of their fellow citizens are being snubbed because some powerful Democrats want to talk out of both sides of their mouths on a fundamental right. Well, they've talked long enough. Now it's time for Democrats to show some backbone. Prove you support Second Amendment rights, or prove you don't and take your chances Nov. 4."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.