Aug 22, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

A decision by House Democrats to allow a vote next month on a proposal to gut the city’s handgun law has stunned local home rule advocates and could foretell a congressional overturn of a future same-sex marriage bill, according to city hall insiders.

Developments surrounding proposed House action to weaken the city’s controversial handgun law come at a time when some gay activists are urging Mayor Adrian Fenty and the D.C. Council to approve legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in the District. Members of the Council are said to be considering introducing a same-sex marriage bill next year.

“The issue at hand is not so much gun-related as it is ensuring that District of Columbia elected officials be able to discharge the duties for which their constituents elected them,” said Fenty and City Council Chair Vincent Gray (D-At-Large) in a letter to House Democrats opposing congressional action on the gun law.

Fenty and Gray, along with nearly all other members of the 13-member D.C. Council, have said they would back a same-sex marriage bill if they determined that Congress would not take steps to kill the legislation.

Congress has the authority to overturn any D.C. law as well as prevent Council-approved bills from becoming law.

A coalition of local gay groups, led by the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, have laid the groundwork for a D.C. same-sex marriage bill over the past 10 years, but advised city officials that it was too risky to pass such a bill when Republicans controlled Congress. Activists argued a gay marriage bill could trigger conservative Republican leaders to impose a congressional prohibition on same-sex marriage in the city.

Beginning in January 2007, when Democrats took control of Congress, local activists looked toward advancing some form of same-sex marriage recognition in the District, including the possibility of legalizing same-sex marriage.

And with Democrats poised to increase their majorities in Congress in the November election, activists and their City Council allies were considering moving ahead with a marriage bill sometime in 2009, under the assumption that House and Senate Democratic leaders would block attempts by anti-gay lawmakers to overturn a D.C. gay marriage bill.

But the recent decision by House Democratic leaders to relinquish their hold on a bill that would weaken the city’s handgun law, thereby allowing pro-gun lawmakers to schedule a vote on the bill, raises questions about whether Democrats would allow a similar vote to overturn a D.C. same-sex marriage bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other House Democratic leaders said they oppose congressional interference on any local D.C. laws or legislation, including gun control measures. But Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues were forced to back down from a hold they had placed on the House D.C. gun bill after at least 48 House Democrats signed a discharge petition initiated by Republicans and conservative Democrats seeking to force Pelosi to allow a vote on the bill.

Under longstanding House rules, a discharge petition signed by at least 218 House members triggers an automatic vote on the specified bill, bypassing the normal committee process and stripping the authority of the majority party to block such a bill.

Anticipating that supporters of the gun bill would obtain the needed 218 signatures on the discharge petition, Pelosi arranged for a House floor vote in September on a less sweeping version of the bill.

The flap over the city’s gun law surfaced after the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26 handed down a precedent-setting decision overturning a 32-year-old city law that banned residents from keeping handguns in their homes.

The high court ruling allows the city to continue to ban possession of guns outside the home and set certain restrictions on gun ownership in the home. The D.C. Council responded to the Supreme Court decision by passing a highly restrictive set of regulations on guns in the home, requiring owners to disassemble their handguns or disable them with trigger locks unless the resident is in “imminent danger.”

Gun advocates quickly accused the city of violating the Supreme Court ruling by imposing an excessively restrictive set of regulations on handguns in the home.

The bill set to come up for a vote in the House is aimed at easing those restrictions and bringing the city into compliance with the Supreme Court ruling, according to backers of the bill. However, the bill goes a step further by repealing the city’s ban on semiautomatic handguns in the home, even though the Supreme Court ruling did not cover semiautomatic guns.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) has called the House gun bill an “unprecedented attack” on the city’s ...