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Comment by vfclists | Hacker News Reader

It is the Wild West in Washington DC, defunding the police and all that.

PS. I am not American, but do state senators hang out in Washington DC or do the operate only in their own states?

The same people who want to "defund the police", which doesn't necessarily mean what it sounds like, are not typically the same people who own firearms. Nor is "defund the police" relevant to Washington, DC, as such funding fights are mostly at the state and local level.

Typically, "state senator" refers to senators at the state government level, and thus they are in their own states.

If you're not an American, you may wish to refrain from glib comments on American politics.

The politician in this article is not a senator in the US federal government, who would work in Washington DC, but a senator in the Washington State government, whose capital is Olympia. He represents a heavily forested rural district whose largest city has 38,000 people, very much the kind of place where carrying a gun is common. You joke about the Wild West but that is exactly what this is about; frontier mentality has not yet vanished in rural parts of the American West.

State senators, like all US citizens, are free to travel just about anywhere, including Washington DC, and Hong Kong, for that matter. "Operating" in any of these places is a different matter. State legislators are typically not full-time legislators, since legislatures are usually only in session part of the year. They have jobs or (more often) own businesses as well. They typically don't have any legislative business in the nation's capitol.

Uh, americans and non-americans: the article says Washington state; there are no senators representing DC

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