JURIST - Paper Chase: US House passes Second Amendment Enforcement Act

[JURIST] The US House of Representatives [official website] on Thursday passed the Second Amendment Enforcement Act (H.R. 6842) [bill text], which would repeal multiple parts of the District of Columbia's Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, including its semiautomatic handgun ban, its registration requirements, and its mandate that any guns in the home be locked up and inoperable. The National Rifle Association-supported bill was passed despite protests from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) [official website] who introduced alternative legislation and argued [press release]:

The needless consideration of this issue, when the District was well on its way to substantially altering its gun own legislation, was all the more egregious because the city's representative could not vote on final passage.

Norton, the sole representative for the District of Columbia in the US Congress, cannot cast a final passage vote. Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) [official website], one of the sponsors of the bill, responded [Fort Wayne Journal Gazette local coverage], "This Congress has lost faith in the willingness of the District of Columbia to defend the Second Amendment." The Senate must vote on the bill before it can take effect. AP has more.

Earlier this week, the District of Columbia City Council [official website] introduced new temporary measures [press release] to further tailor gun laws to July's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller [JURIST report; Duke Law backgrounder], in which the Court affirmed a decision invalidating the DC handgun ban [JURIST report]. Heller marked the first occasion that the Supreme Court directly addressed the Second Amendment since 1939's US v. Miller [case materials]. In July, the DC City Council had passed emergency legislation [JURIST report] to amend the city's long-standing ban on handguns immediately following Heller.