James Norton: “Mr. Speaker, when this law was first introduced, it was simply regarded as another absurd piece of legislation. There…”

“Mr. Speaker, when this law was first introduced, it was simply regarded as another absurd piece of legislation. There are lots of them during a session of Congress. When we moved toward a vote on this law, it left the realm of the absurd and entered the realm of the truly reckless, particularly reckless and callous at a time when 16 of our children are dead from guns in this city, far more than in any recent year; and at a time when, to their credit, the mayor of the city and the police chief of the city have reduced adult homicides by 25 percent. I am on the floor this morning largely because this repeal will largely affect kids in the District of Columbia, and I cannot believe that that is the will of the great majority of the people of this House. There could not be a more wrong time or a more wrong place, a more wrong city, a more wrong region. This region still has not recovered from the sniper attack of 2002, which left 10 people in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia dead, 5 more injured from a Bushmaster assault weapon that would now be legal to have in your homes, to have in your businesses, to have in your workplaces in the District of Columbia, in the Nation's Capital, which is now under an orange alert.”