BELLEVUE, WA – Monday’s arrest of an armed congressional staffer of anti-gun Sen. Cory Booker’s office clearly reveals the New Jersey Democrat is another Capitol Hill hypocrite when it comes to “guns for me, but not for thee,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.
According to a published report, Capitol police arrested 59-year-old Kevin A. Batts of New Jersey, a retired Newark police detective for carrying a pistol without a license. He was reportedly arrested after accompanying a member of Congress into the U.S. Capitol building. He reportedly advised officers outside of the Senate gallery that he was armed.
“Cory Booker has never met a gun control law he didn’t like,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “He has supported all kinds of gun grabbing proposals, the stricter the better. Yet, it is now revealed that Mr. Batts, described as a ‘special assistant’ to Booker, often accompanies him to events. Being a retired police officer makes him just another private citizen, with no special privileges. The fact he apparently goes with Booker, presumably armed, to various events in New Jersey is ample evidence the senator thinks it’s okay for him to have armed security, while he has labored to keep every average citizen disarmed, and vulnerable to violent crime.
“We can’t have any sympathy for Mr. Batts,” Gottlieb continued. “As a former police officer, he surely must know carrying a gun into the U.S. Capitol is strictly prohibited. And, since he is from New Jersey, where average citizens have a very difficult time getting a carry permit and non-residents cannot carry at all, he certainly knows the penalty for carrying without a license in a different jurisdiction.
“We’re reminded of the time back in 1986 when anti-gun-rights Sen. Ted Kennedy’s bodyguard was arrested in the Russell Senate Office Building for having an Uzi and Beretta in his gear,” Gottlieb recalled. “That man was also a former police officer. Booker appears to be cut from the same cloth; presuming his safety is more important than that of the single mom or the working dad going from one job to another to pay their bills and keep their families safe.
“It’s time the senator should understand,” he observed, “that what’s good for Cory ought to be good for the entire country. Armed personal protection is a right of the people, not a privilege of political office.”