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Portman's Vote
by Dave Girves
As an Ohioan I had to hang my head in shame
while Rob Portman cast his vote against even having a debate in the Senate on
the issues surrounding gun violence control.
I
could only wonder “Why?”
After
calling his Columbus and D.C. offices the best answer I could get from the staff
person who answered was: “The Senator hasn’t made a statement about why he cast
that vote and I can’t speculate about what he was thinking.”
Of
course we know he opposes universal background checks, even though 90% of
Americans are in favor of them, and most Republicans, gun owners, and NRA
members favor them as well. But we also know the NRA opposes background checks
and funds his campaign.
He
has admitted that he opposes a ban on assault weapons and voted against the ban
when he was a Representative citing concerns for the Second Amendment.
But
why not debate these issues?
Certainly
we can all agree that at the time our founding fathers wrote that citizens
should have the right to bear arms, those arms consisted of single-shot
muzzle-loaded muskets. And we can agree that no citizen has the right to own a
thermonuclear bomb.
The
job of the Senate is to draw the line between those extremes and say whether an
assault weapon with a 30-round magazine is on the legal or illegal side of that
line.
Now
I can only wonder how he would have voted if his son had been killed at the age
of 6, in elementary school, with an assault weapon.
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