Rep. Boebert Defeats Partisan Anti-Member Safety Gun Control Amendment in the Natural Resources Committee

Today, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-03) successfully defeated Congressman Jared Huffman’s (CA-D) partisan anti-member safety gun control amendment to the Committee’s rules during the House Committee on Natural Resources organizational meeting.

Congresswoman Boebert stated, “Leftists need to move past political stunts like trying to strip Members of Congress of their Constitutional rights to protect themselves while they sit on the House Committee on Natural Resources and instead address the real issues facing this Committee, like western water, which is so important for rural Colorado."

Background:

Since 1967, the U.S. Capitol Police Board’s regulations have authorized Members of Congress to transport firearms on the Capitol Campus everywhere, except in three very specific locations: The House Floor, the Speaker’s Lobby, and the Rayburn Room. The Capitol Police Board permits Members to transport firearms for their personal protection everywhere else on the Capitol Campus, including all Committee rooms.

Prohibiting Members from exercising their Second Amendment rights while they sit on the House Committee on Natural Resources would be a colossal waste of government resources. If this frivolous rule would have passed, would it have required Capitol Police to guard every entrance to this Committee room and ask them to stop and frisk every Member before entering for every hearing and every markup for the entire Congress?

Additionally, prohibiting Members of Congress from exercising their Second Amendment rights while they sit on Committee sets a dangerous precedent with threats against Members of Congress at an all-time-high. In the last Congress, a deranged individual was arrested by the FBI for threats made against Congresswoman Boebert. Sadly, there is a long history of threats made against individual Members of Congress. In March of 1954, four members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party opened fire onto the House floor and wounded five Members.  In July of 1998, a gunman entered the Capitol through a Member and employee entrance with a six-shot revolver. When the magnetometer went off, the gunman shot a Capitol Police Officer in the head, engaged in a gun fight, and entered the office of the then Majority Whip. In 2011, a deranged gunman shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 17 other people. In June of 2017, at a Congressional baseball game practice attended by 24 Members of Congress, a gunman opened fire and seriously injured then-Whip Steve Scalise. Just last year, a mad man rushed the stage and tried to stab Congressman Lee Zeldin at a campaign rally in New York. Additionally, under incompetent Democrat leadership, Washington, D.C. has a violent crime problem that is often 150% higher than the national average.

These facts highlight the need for Members to have the ability to exercise their right to self-defense.

Congresswoman Boebert is a champion for the Second Amendment and previously led the opposition to Congressman Huffman’s rule in the 117th Congress to ban Members from exercising their Second Amendment rights while sitting on the House Committee on Natural Resources. Additionally, she successfully defeated to Democrats’ plan to ban all Members from exercising their Second Amendment rights anywhere on the Capitol grounds.