Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan) stressed the need for action yesterday on a bill to establish the a second political status commission, in light of a federal court ruling that struck down the NMI\u2019s ban on handguns.<\/p>\n
House Bill 19-02 seeks to evaluate the CNMI\u2019s political relationship with the United States through this commission.<\/p>\n
After the House passed a Senate bill to regulate firearms in the Commonwealth, Demapan said they have to think forward toward a much larger problem on the \u201ctrue value\u201d of the Covenant that established a political relationship with the United States.<\/p>\n
Forty years ago, Demapan said, the framers of the NMI Constitution made it clear what was important to \u201ca peaceful community\u201d and people but perhaps there were \u201ctwo major things we missed out on,\u201d which was the applicability of the right to bear arms and the rights to the 200 miles of submerged lands around the islands<\/p>\n
Demapan said the Second Amendment does not specify what kind of arms are allowed and the NMI did not infringe on this right, referring to the permit of .22 caliber guns and .410 shotguns for hunting.<\/p>\n
Demapan complained about the NMI\u2019s people lack of a right to vote for President and a lack of full representation in U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n
When lawmakers take the oath of the office they take an oath to uphold NMI constitution and also U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the reciprocity is not there,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t ask, if we don\u2019t demand for it, this status quo relationship will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He urged that the Senate act on House Bill 19-02.<\/p>\n
He stressed that the bill does not ask to change the NMI\u2019s political status but evaluate the political status now and \u201coptions\u201d out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t do that evaluation. We will continue to come against rulings, case laws, bills that will drastically effect our relationship with the United States\u201d with \u201cno way to work around it\u2026caught between a stone and hard place\u201d because \u201cwe swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan) stressed the need for action yesterday on a bill to establish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,194,67,57],"class_list":["post-224748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-house-bill","tag-people","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}