“Capitol Police Chief Joseph T. Little [above] thinks it is time the current ban on bringing guns into the State House was extended to legislators,” newsblog.projo.com reports. Now there’s an idea I can get behind: disarming criminals. I mean, if you remove the necessity of possessing a criminal record to qualify as a criminal—and even if you don’t—Rhode Island politicians make the grade. Anyway, check out Little’s rationale for disarming state politicians . . .
On the job since July, Little said he has had some recent conversations with [House Speaker Gordon] Fox’s chief of staff about the current exclusion from this ban for lawmakers and their staff, prompted in part by advisories coming from the FBI about the need for heightened awareness of security issues as the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist acts approached.
So now the Capitol police view RI pols as potential terrorists as well as criminals? I like the way this is going! Wait! Is that the voice of common sense I hear? Kinda sorta . . . no.
Among the most vocal opponents [to the previously proposed ban on pols packing heat] was then-Senator Michael J. Damiani, D-East Providence, who vowed to continue carrying his .45-caliber SIG semiautomatic pistol to Senate sessions no matter what policy was adopted. He said he’d be an asset, not a danger, to the Capitol Police if shooting ever took place in the State House.
“To implement a no-gun policy when you don’t have a building secure is putting the cart before the horse,” the commission chairman Rep. Joseph A. Trillo, R-Warwick, said at the time. “You don’t want to disarm the good guys and let the bad guys come in the back door.”
Here in the “shall issue” Ocean State, some good guys are more equal than others. Unless they’re not.