Can Members of Congress Pack Heat?

Lawmakers renew a clash over carrying firearms: A Dispatch Explainer.

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Rep. Lauren Boebert with a gun while campaigning in Creede, Colorado, 2022. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Tuesday’s State of the Union was peaceful, but safety concerns prompted a contentious meeting last week in which Republicans quashed Democrats’ push to continue banning firearms in House committee rooms.

The debate and party-line vote came as the Natural Resources Committee decided on its rules for the 118th Congress, which left out a 2021 provision prohibiting members of Congress from bringing firearms into the hearing room.

The same Democrat who raised the debate, Rep. Jared Huffman, and others in his party sent a letter to congressional leadership raising concerns ahead of Tuesday’s State of the Union address and referencing past flaps. In one incident Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, set off metal detectors by carrying a concealed gun when trying to go to the House floor.

Debates about members of Congress carrying weapons are nothing new.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    J6 reminds us why our legislators might rightly want to carry a gun. However, I think it’s eminently prudent to make them keep guns in their office when they go on the floor. Nobody has a right to be on the floor of Congress with a gun.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    The only thing that will happen if they allow members to carry, is they will start to threaten one another with it. Somebody will get mad, and get in someone's face, and the other member will pull the gun ...And pretend to feel threatened, maybe even shoot.

    Preston Brooks reminds us what congressmen do with anything at all in their hands that they can use as a weapon.

    These Republicans only wish to do so to INTIMIDATE. They have armed guards on the premises, they don't need to carry.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      That presumes they are different than other Americans, for whom the vast majority have no incidents with them.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Scarlette Tarte

        Lol, well are you like MTG or Gaetz? No? Me either. So they are different. And history shows not to be trusted with anything that can be used as a weapon on the house floor.

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          Ben Connelly

          Yeah I was thinking about it too, and immediately realized that MTG would be packing and saw why that would be a bad idea.

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  3. J. Everett Schubert

    I'm a proud law-abiding gun owner, but insisting on carrying one into the House or Senate chamber is a political stunt, nothing more. There's just no reason for it.

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    1. MathewA

      I bet a whole lot of members wished they were armed on Jan 6th

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        Ben Connelly

        Some did. In his interview with TD afterwards, Peter Meijer said he had one with him in his office. Nobody has a right to carry on the floor of Congress, but clearly members do fear for their safety and should be allowed to keep guns on them some of the time. I think a guns-in-the-office-but-not-on-the-floor policy makes the most sense.

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    George.Skinner

    Hopefully this latest skirmish in the culture wars doesn’t end in a gun incident involving one of the less stable members of Congress. The only real reason for carrying a firearm in the Capitol is to make a political statement. To that end, this is starting to seem almost like a religious obligation for some Republican politicians, much like baptized Sikhs wearing a kirpan dagger.

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    1. MathewA

      "The only real reason for carrying a firearm in the Capitol is to make a political statement."

      Really? You don't think any of them might have wanted to defend themselves on Jan 6th?

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        George.Skinner

        You think they’d be more effective than the Capitol Police who were already defending them? Also, given evidence that some Republican congressmen had been touring some of the rioters around the Capitol before the riot, I’m not sure the guns would be in the hands of the people who needed defending.

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        1. BadgerBill

          Agree. The whole “I gonna defend myself” meme is just ridiculous, especially in that setting. Repeal the 2nd Amendment.

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  5. Avatar photo
    Aylene Wright

    Interesting, and thanks for putting the current times in context:

    "The People’s House used to look more like the Wild West. In the 18th and 19th centuries politicians in both chambers often were armed. Threats of violence and instances of intimidation toward other lawmakers, reporters, and witnesses, were common, according to Joanne B. Freeman, who wrote a book about violence in the Capitol in the lead-up to the Civil War."

    One framing of the current moment that even some Dispatchers tend to fall into is "the country is more polarized and divided than it's EVER been, the potential for political violence is the worst it's ever been" and this I find ridiculous, and IMO we don't even have to go back to the Civil War era for that.

    We can go back to the 1960s and 1970s. The era in which a President, his heir-apparent brother, two civil rights leaders (MLK and Malcolm), were all assassinated. In which bombings and hijackings were routine. In which there was a controversial war in which Americans were subject to the draft, and when many more people were abused and killed by cops. Etc.

    BTW I wasn't alive myself for the above but I know many people who were.

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    1. BadgerBill

      Aylene, I lived through it (albeit as a clueless teenager (is that redundant?)), and you are right. I find the whole discussion of “civil war” and “worst polarization ever”, and “secession” both juvenile and indulgent. Give me a break. “Secession”, my left knee. What is eastern Washington going to do on its own?

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      Wilhelm

      I heartily recommend Freeman's book, "The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War." Her politics are annoying. But when folks say "The country has never been this divided," there is plenty of, um, ammunition in "Field of Blood" to dispute that view.

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        Scarlette Tarte

        I have it and read it as well. I am going to sell it (I sell many after I read them, I just don't have the room to keep all the books I read...and I love to read) for pennies on eBay.

        It was great and very, very interesting. Political violence happened much more than most of us are aware of today.

        I didn't find her politics in the book that much. Her facts were great. Her history was fantastic.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Wilhelm

          Per her politics, I follow her on Twitter. 1-star, do not recommend.

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          1. BadgerBill

            As I’m not on any social media, this is a legitimate question: If you don’t recommend her, why do you follow her?

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    3. Avatar photo
      JDW

      Good points. I appreciate your study of history. For me, I was alive but too young to know.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Aylene Wright

        Hijackings at one point were so common that Allen Funt, host of Candid Camera, was once caught up in one. Some fellow passengers who knew Funt was aboard. at first assumed that the whole hijacking was a Candid Camera stunt, and that hijackers were actors. But it was a real hijacking.

        The article below (yes it's Snopes but it's classic Snopes, before its ideological turn), mentions almost offhandedly that "This was a not uncommon occurrence at the time: in 1969 alone, nearly three dozen attempted or successful hijackings to Cuba took place on flights originating in the U.S."

        https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/candid-camera-hijacking/

        What I found fascinating is that so many people in 1969, actually found it plausible that a mainstream broadcast TV series would actually go to the trouble of faking a hijacking, just for the laughs.

        If a similar stunt were to be put on today by, say, Dave Chappelle, then it would be seen as edgy and controversial.

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        1. BadgerBill

          And the air marshal might kill them.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Chris L

    Per § 102–74.440, federal law prohibits the possession of firearms or other dangerous weapons in federal facilities and federal court facilities by all persons not specifically authorized by 18 U.S.C. 930. If Boebert et al want to propose a law to allow for such permissions/carveouts owing to this precedent, then they are of course welcome to do so (I mean, that's their *job*).

    I go through great efforts to know the local, state, and federal laws when it comes to transporting my firearms, where it is appropriate/legal to conceal-carry, and associated reciprocity, along with changes that come somewhat regularly. Is it too much to ask for LAWMAKERS to know this too?

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    1. Safety Cone

      Is/Has there been a legal push for reciprocity nationally forcing recognition of out of state permits? Similar to marriage for same-sex and mixed race couples?

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      1. Slowdave1

        I've never heard of a national push for forced reciprocity and I, a gun owner and CC permit holder, would not be in favor of it. However, reciprocity agreements between like-minded states are common and numerous.

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        Chris L

        Not that I know of. I don't see how that would be possible anyway; that has been the purview of states and their interactions. As laborious as it may be to negotiate this 49 different ways for each state, it at least acknowledges the at times glaring differences between them in a robust acknowledgement of federalism. A one-size-fits-all national approach would be doomed to fail in light of this (you can't tell me that Rhode Island must be forced to be okay with a CCL/LTC from Texas).

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          Scarlette Tarte

          Oh yes, they do want that. Same as they forced the fugitive slave act on northern states, ignoring their states rights to let blacks live as freedmen in their own northern states, they very much want to force blue states to be just like them when it comes to open or concealed carry.

          They absolutely want to force that and are trying to do so thru the courts. Their actual belief in federalism is dime thick.

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          1. Slowdave1

            Disagree. I am "they" and I don't want that. Not saying there's not some super minority fringe that beats their drum about that to make headlines and get donations--i mean that's what American politicians do, right? But not a widespread push by any means.

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    Pat @ Tavi Hall

    Back in 2012, when I visited the capitol, there were metal detectors on all the doors through which I could go into the buildings. Are you telling me those have now been removed or that they removed ones at the entry to the house and senate floors?

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      Harvest Prude vertical-nib Author

      They removed the ones at the entries to the House floor--there were never any outside the Senate chamber.

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        Pat @ Tavi Hall

        Thank you, it's hard to know sometimes how crazed things have gotten.

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