David Codrea writes [via ammoland.com]:

Speaker Paul Ryan will not allow Congressional action on national concealed carry reciprocity to move bills forward, Rep. Thomas Massie told host Mark Walters Thursday on Armed American Radio. The reason given is Ryan thinks the timing isn’t right to consider H.R. 2909, the D.C. Personal Protection Reciprocity Act, a supplement to state reciprocity provisions of H.R. 38.

Massie introduced his legislation after the ball field shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republicans by an anti-Trump Bernie Sanders supporter in Alexandria, VA.

“I would tell you this is a gun-free zone except that I know the criminals are carrying every day,” Massie told Walters via phone from “right outside the Capitol.

“It is only a 10-mile gun-free zone for law-abiding citizens,” Massie explained. “Although Virginia’s a reciprocity state, and most everybody with a permit could have been carrying in Virginia, they couldn’t carry in Washington D.C. where they started their day and where they were going to end their day.”

District gun laws meant those who left their D.C. offices for the ball field were unarmed and at this guy’s mercy by mandate.

What prevented the shooting from being worse and racking up a higher victim toll was that a member of the leadership had police protection, Massie said. “I guarantee you there are thousands of firearms here in D.C. they’re just not in the hands of lawful citizens.”

Massie went on to explain how he’s seen “a lot of pro-gun bills being introduced but they were going nowhere.” That’s a common tactic among politicians happy to capitalize off good press they can showcase to their constituents while cynically understanding the bills are intended for that, not to actually be passed and to change anything.

So why has there been no movement on reciprocity and on the additional provision of recognizing state permits in the District?

“We’ve got over 80 cosponsors at this point,” Massie told Walters when asked the status of his bill, which is currently and procedurally in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform because Congress has oversight responsibility for Washington D.C. He’s “pressing for a hearing on it.”

Massie is understandably frustrated by “leadership” obstruction.

“Why haven’t we seen movement over either 38 or 2909 since the horrific events in Virginia?” Walters asked, noting the Republicans control the House and the Senate and both Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appear to be blocking bills advancing the right to keep and bear arms.

“You know what?” Massie replied, “The Speaker told me he didn’t think the timing was right. And I think this is the exact timing to bring this bill.”

Of course it is. What a disingenuous excuse. When will the timing be better?

The thing is, depending on who gun owners listen to, both Ryan and McConnell are called “staunch supporters of the Second Amendment.” Yet time after time, on guns, on Obamacare, on immigration, on any real change, they look like they’re taking positions directly contrary to why a critical mass of Americans got tired of standard Republican excuse-making fare and voted for Donald Trump.

Rights depend on “timing”?

“A right delayed is a right denied,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted. Any “Republican” who doesn’t understand that deserves to be replaced by someone who does.

“Politics is the art of the possible,” apologists for the status quo representing themselves as “pragmatic” will counter. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Requiring permits in the first place is hardly perfect. And as far as what is possible goes, how would those averse to testing limits have a clue?

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.

In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.