Can the MSM do it? Yes they can!
WASHINGTON — Last June, when Rep. Earl Blumenauer helped bring a bill to the House floor to ban the shipment of chimpanzees and other primates across state lines, it was mocked as a waste of time. Republicans insisted that the odds of getting bit by a chimp were “one in 38 million” and that lawmakers’ time would be better spent on real problems like the soaring price of gas.
The bill passed the House but died in the Senate.
Blumenauer’s bill returned to the House floor Tuesday in the wake of a brutal and highly publicized attack last week in which a Connecticut woman was critically injured by a rampaging chimp. As last year, it passed easily by a 323-95 vote.
Unlike last year, Blumenauer had a powerful response to complaints that the bill was trivial.
The one-in-38 million claims seems to come from this floor speech by Utah Republican Rob Bishop, who opposed the regulation on cost grounds. And as with most new laws, I’m not sure how this one in particular would have prevented what happened in Connecticut, as I assume monkeys without trigger locks already owned as pets would be grandfathered in. Remember, monkeys don’t bite people. Idiots who own monkeys who let them escape bite people.