RAWA language withdrawn from House Appropriations bill
News on 26 May 2016
News on 26 May 2016
It appears from Poker Players Alliance tweets that Sen. Lindsey Graham’s attempt to stealthily insert Restoration of the American Wire Actlanguage into a must-pass Appropriations bill has come to an undignified end, removed from the Senate bill when it moved to the House.
And an attempt Tuesday by Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican from Pennsylvania, to insert similar language into the House version of the Appropriations bill failed to garner support and was withdrawn.
“Ultimately, Dent withdraws his amendment. Equivalent as failure. We win. RAWA loses! Thank you for taking action to defeat this effort!” the PPA tweeted its members.
The withdrawal of the language will also please a number of conservative libertarian groups, who earlier this month wrote to the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, John Culberson, criticising Graham’s subterfuge in inserting the RAWA language into an unrelated bill – a copy of that letter can be accessed here:
The concluding three paragraphs state:
“This clearly is an attempt to circumvent regular order in the House and Senate. We are deeply concerned that this language has been inserted to be used as a placeholder for “air dropping” RAWA in a conference report, whether it be the CJS Appropriations bill, an Omnibus or a Continuing Resolution, as a way to deny the American people the ability to have their direct say in a fundamental legislative shift that limits individual rights. The process of regular order safeguards those rights by allowing for an open and meaningful discussion to occur.
“Furthermore, the consequence of RAWA legislation being buried in an appropriations bill sets a dangerous precedent for any party to use appropriations bills in the future to circumvent the Constitution’s protections in a variety of areas—most notably the 2nd Amendment, and the possibility of further federal intervention in firearm and ammunition sales.
“Were regular order to be ignored, organizations dedicated to preserving individual rights and the rule of law would hold members accountable for allowing this to happen. But even if that does not happen, the language itself is troubling, has profound implications for national policy, damages the Constitution and potentially damages the Second Amendment. For those reasons and others, we ask for your firm and public opposition to the provision and ask that it be struck from any conference report.”
