NY Representative Carolyn Maloney Receives Death Threats Over Support of Gun Liability Insurance Legislation

Gun Liability insuranceNew York Representative Carolyn Maloney said she received death threats Tuesday at her upper East Side office warning her not to move forward with gun control legislation.

Source: Source: NY Daily News | Published on April 5, 2013

"They said they were going to kill me," said Maloney. The Democratic congresswoman was so disturbed by the three menacing phone calls - which came about an hour apart - that she skipped a dinner Tuesday night of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, where she was supposed to present an award. "I couldn't go. Who knows what could happen?" Maloney told the Daily News. "I think any member of Congress would be scared after what happened to my good friend Gabby Giffords."

Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman, survived being shot in the head outside an Arizona supermarket in 2011.

"You have to take these things seriously," said Maloney.

Cops were at her Manhattan home and her office Tuesday night, she said. The NYPD confirmed detectives are investigating the threats. Maloney said police were checking to see if the calls - answered by staffers, including an unpaid intern - could be traced and were reviewing security in her office.

The threatening callers all referred to gun control legislation that Maloney introduced on Friday, which would require weapons owners to hold liability insurance, similar to what car owners are required to purchase. "It's not unusual to have calls saying they don't like the bill. You get calls in support and opposition," she said. "But . . . this is unsettling."

Despite the death threats, Maloney said she is moving forward with the bill, which she called "common sense."

"A gun is more dangerous than a car," she said.

The threats came during a week in which President Obama will hit the road to pitch his gun control agenda directly to voters in Connecticut and Colorado one week before a critical Senate vote.

Obama will speak Wednesday in Colorado, which responded to the Aurora theater massacre last year by requiring background checks for all gun purchases - something Democrats hope to do at the federal level.

On Monday, the President will travel to Hartford, Conn., to speak in a state where lawmakers just reached a deal on the toughest gun laws since the Newtown school shooting.