By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Recently-introduced federal legislation (H.R. 7965) would prohibit firearms at federal election sites, ostensibly to improve safety on election day, but a leading grassroots gun rights organization says it is another attempt by Democrats to demonize gun owners.
Newsweek reported the legislation, introduced by California Rep. Raul Ruiz and co-sponsored by equally-anti-gun D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, reflects “growing concern over voter intimidation and election worker safety, particularly after recent elections marked by heightened threats and political tension.”
But the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says Ruiz and Norton “deliberately want to lower gun owner turnout during important federal elections.”
“Democrats talk about discouraging voters by requiring identification, yet here they are trying to discourage gun owners from voting by intimidation,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The hypocrisy is monumental.”
As noted by Newsweek, “More than 20 states and Washington, D.C., already restrict guns at voting sites, and courts have long recognized polling places as ‘sensitive locations’ where firearm limits can be lawful.”
The Ruiz bill prohibits “unauthorized possession of a firearm” at a federal election site.
“That’s an interesting choice of words,” Gottlieb observed in a statement to the media, “which I’m certain Ruiz and Norton didn’t think through, because we could reasonably argue that a concealed carry permit or license authorizes someone to possess a firearm in a public place. In a constitutional carry state, the law essentially authorizes every citizen to carry a protective sidearm, without a permit or license. So, the logical question to Ruiz is, what’s the point of your bill?
“The answer,” Gottlieb continued, “which you’ll never get from the sponsors, is that the point is to instill some kind of fear or concern among voters that another citizen, exercising his or her right to bear arms, is automatically some kind of threat. We’ve got news for Ruiz and Norton. Legally-armed citizens have civil rights, too, including the right to vote in a federal election.”
Gottlieb, alluding to the number of legally-armed American citizens, numbering well into the tens of millions, noted how “on any given day, people might walk right past an armed citizen going about his or her business and not even realize it. The same thing would happen at a polling place.”
“Let’s look at this from a far different viewpoint,” he said. “The presence of a few legally-armed citizens at a polling place might actually be a deterrent to violence. More than once, an armed citizen has intervened and prevented a mass shooting, but all Ruiz and Norton want to accomplish with this bill is to make American voters afraid of their neighbors. It’s a deplorable attempt to create unnecessary fear of armed citizens, and the constitutional provision which protects their right to keep and bear arms.”
Newsweek noted that the legislation has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
