Staff Writer

Typically passionate Jewish supporters of D.C. voting rights are scratching their heads in confusion.

That's because recently proposed legislation that would give the District full voting rights in the House of Representatives also includes an amendment that would obliterate the city's long-standing ban on firearms.

The bill passed the Senate last month by a vote of 61-37, but has stalled in the House as the Democratic leadership decides how to address the widely supported amendment.

"It's a real head scratcher because it's a piece of legislation that's about empowering the people of D.C. to have some self-determination, but, at the same time, it's imposing rules on D.C. undermining its self-determination," said Jacob Feinspan, the executive director of Jews United for Justice. The group is aligned with several other organizations, including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and D.C. Vote, in pushing for representation.

The District currently has one nonvoting member in the House.

Motivated by the basic Jewish values of justice and equality, the JUFJ has long pushed for D.C. to get a voting say in the House. Yet, the group has also fought hard to ensure that the city's long-standing gun laws remain intact, and came out in force last year when Congress attempted to pass the Second Amendment Enforcement Act, a bill that would have effectively stripped the District's right to regulate arms.

Now, that piece of legislation has come back, this time attached as an amendment to the D.C. voting rights bill.

Introduced by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), the amendment would allow D.C. residents and businesses to purchase guns -- something that is illegal -- and decriminalize the carrying of a loaded firearm in one's home or business. The bill also would remove criminal penalties for the possession of an unregistered firearm and remove the District's long-standing ban on semiautomatic weapons, including pistols, rifles and shotguns, according to the bill's language. (The Supreme Court has ruled that the District must change its gun law, but no change has yet been made.)

In addition, the amendment would allow gun dealers in Maryland and Virginia to sell and deliver handguns to residents of the District without keeping record of such purchases.

"This is garbage that the Congress wants to keep going back in to try and tell us how to write and pass our laws. It's as bad as not letting us vote," said Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, a longtime proponent of the District's right to have representation on the Hill. "From our perspective, this is really a decision for our [local] elected officials," the District resident said.

For other Jewish advocacy groups, the amendment has spurred a difficult backroom debate: Can groups supporting the District's right to a vote put aside conflicts of conscious to back a faulty bill?

"It's a really good question, and we haven't had a chance to chat that through," said JUFJ's Feinspan. "I think different groups will come down on different sides of that" depending on which issue proves more important.

For his group, though, Feinspan says a final decision will only be made after "getting some feedback from the broader community: If the majority of D.C. would suffer dramatically because of this, we're not going to support the legislation."

Members of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, a group that has long worked on both issues, are also expressing "deep, deep disappointment," according to Barbara Weinstein, the group's director for public policy.

"This coalition has been working on this issue for many years now and every time we've gotten close, sadly something has come up at the end that has stopped the bill from moving forward," Weinstein said. "There was a lot of optimism that this wouldn't be the case now that conditions were finally ripe for this bill to go through, but at the same time we've sadly become used to roadblocks being thrown up."

Daniel Solomon, a co-founder of D.C. vote, pointed to the irony in the amendment. "The gun amendment proves the need for full representation, including the Senate," he said in an e-mail, noting that he was speaking solely on his own behalf and not as a member of D.C. Vote. "Senator from Nevada, for example, would never try to alter Maryland's gun laws. Senators don't mess with each others' jurisdictions."

In 2007, Congress debated a similar D.C. voting rights bill, which subsequently passed in the House. The legislation ultimately died under the weight of a Senate filibuster.

When President Barack Obama came to power this year, having touted the issue while on the campaign trail, supporters renewed their confidence, with many hoping for quick, clean passage in the current session of Congress.

That hope, however, appears to be diminishing as the issue continues to be viewed as a political dart board.

"D.C. in a lot of ways is often used by members from around the country to test ideas that in a way they feel they can do because D.C. has a disenfranchised status, and it's all part and parcel of the same problem," said Weinstein.

Though admittedly crestfallen, Jewish groups said they will continue to lobby members of Congress on the amendment in hopes that the House will take up a clean version of the bill, scrubbed of all gun measures.

Now that the amendment has been approved in the Senate, "we are hopeful to work with congressional leaders and see if there is a way to fix it," said Hadar Susskind, the JCPA's Washington director.

Because the provision has already passed one chamber, Susskind believes "there is no simple answer" as to how one removes the amendment. "I frankly have no idea what they're going to do," he added, noting that the JCPA has yet to take a position on the current bill.

"I think that out in the advocate community ... sometimes we know the clear strategy, [but] I'm not sure that's the case on this," Susskind said.

Similarly, for the folks at D.C. Vote, the city's pre-eminent voting rights activists, the mindset is still proactive.

"We are still operating under our original objective, which is to get the D.C. Voting Rights Act passed," said Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, the group's public affairs director.

Kinlow said his group is on the Hill pushing for a closed rule vote on the bill, which means that no amendments would be permitted on the bill.

And if that initiative fails?

"That's an excellent question, but one we are reluctant to address at this point."

For Rabbi Fred Reiner of the District's Temple Sinai, a chief advocate for the issue, the fight has always been about fundamental Jewish values. The rabbi added that although he does not support a voting bill that strips the city's gun laws, he is hopeful that Congress can pass the bill "the right way."

"By my lens, it's what's right," he said. "For me, it's a statement about justice and equal representation under the law."