Bobby Jindal

Congressman Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month for September.
In nominating Jindal for the Award, John Snyder, CCRKBA Public Affairs Director, said that, “in the aftermath of firearm confiscations from law-abiding American citizens during Hurricane Katrina last year, a counter movement began to develop. Successful efforts have been made in courts to censure public officials, including political, law enforcement and military authorities, for taking lawfully owned firearms away from law-abiding citizens during the hurricane. The court system has ordered the return of such firearms as have been seized. Complementing the judicial approach have been legislative approaches to prohibit future seizures of such firearms. Some of the states already have enacted into law such prohibitions.
“In Washington, D.C., some Senators and Representatives work through legislative and constitutional thickets to find a way to prevent seizures of guns from law-abiding citizens during times of emergency. Rep. Jindal, a strong defender of the right to keep and bear arms, is a leading proponent of this legislative approach. He deserves the CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month Award.”
Congressman Jindal is the chief sponsor of H.R. 5013, the proposed Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006, which the House of Representatives approved in a 322-99 vote in late July. If approved by the Senate and signed into law by the President, it would amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to prohibit the confiscation of firearms during certain national emergencies.
“Today,” said Jindal as the House passed H.R. 5013, “the House of Representatives reaffirmed that in times of disaster you cannot throw out the constitutional amendment that guarantees the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
Born June 10, 1971 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 2, 2004 from Louisiana’s First Congressional District.
Jindal was born to recently arrived immigrants from the subcontinent of India who were attending graduate school. Jindal was a Hindu but converted to Catholicism in high school. He graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island with honors in biology and public policy. Afterwards, he received a master’s degree in politics from Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. After Oxford he joined McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm.
Louisiana Governor Mike Foster appointed Jindal Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals, where he served from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 1999, he was Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He also was the youngest ever president of the University of Louisiana System between 1999 and 2001. Newly elected President George W. Bush appointed him Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a post he held from 2001 to 2003.
Jindal is the only Indian-American currently serving in Congress, and is only the second in congressional history, after Dalip Singh Saund, who represented California’s 29th District between 1957 and 1963.
He was chosen by Scholastic Update magazine as “one of America’s top 10 extraordinary young people for the next millennium.”
Bobby Jindal was India Abroad Person of the Year 2005.
He married Supriya Jolly in 1997 and has two children, Selia and Shaan.
In the 2003 open primary for Governor of Louisiana, Jindal came in first place with 33 percent of the vote. He received endorsements from the largest newspaper in Louisiana, the Times Picayune, the Democratic mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, and Republican former governor Mike Foster. In the runoff election he faced then Lt. Governor Kathleen Blanco, a conservative Democrat. Blanco won with 52 percent of the vote to Jindal’s forty eight percent.
Despite the defeat, the run for Governor made Jindal a well-known figure on the state’s political scene.
A few weeks after the gubernatorial runoff, Jindal decided to run for Louisiana’s First Congressional District. The incumbent, David Vitter, himself a CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month, was running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. John Breaux. He was elected with 78 percent of the vote.
Elected Freshman Class President by his House colleagues, Jindal serves on a number of House Committees. He is Vice Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks.