Skip to footer

Congressional aide charged after allegedly bringing pistol to House building

Capitol Police arrested Ryan Shucard, press secretary to Rep. Tom Marino, after a routine search required for entry. It's not the first incident like this at congressional buildings.

|
Carolyn Kaster/AP
In this May 5 photo, the US Capitol Building is seen through the columns on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington.

An aide to a US congressman had a bad, albeit brief day at the office on Friday.

At 9:15 a.m., Ryan Shucard, press secretary to Rep. Tom Marino (R) of Pennsylvania, was arrested by Capitol Police after they say they discovered a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun during the routine search required for entry into congressional buildings.

The police told Representative Marino’s office that the incident appeared to have been an accident, said Marino's chief of staff, Bill Tighe. Mr. Shucard had no intention to use the gun, the police said according to Mr. Tighe, and it was not loaded.

Shucard was placed on unpaid leave after the incident.

“He’s broken up,” Tighe told Time. “He’s disappointed in himself.”

“I think it is a situation where he lives in Virginia, and he transported the firearm into D.C. accidentally,” he added. “We’re very disappointed that he did not display responsible gun ownership.”

Carrying guns outside one’s home or business in the District of Columbia is illegal. Shucard was charged on Friday with carrying a pistol without a license, a felony.

Although the District's gun laws are among the strictest in the United States, the current regulations are more relaxed than they were prior to 2008, when the US Supreme Court overturned a general handgun ban in the city in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Recently, however, Republican members of Congress have been targeting these regulations: The GOP-controlled House passed a bill on Wednesday that would strip D.C. of the funds necessary to enforce its gun regulations, though House Republicans acknowledge it will almost certainly fail in the Senate.

The incident Friday isn’t the first of its kind in recent years. In 2007, Phillip Thompson, a top aide to then-Sen. James Webb (D) of Virginia, was arrested for carrying a loaded pistol into a Senate office building.

According to a source for The Washington Post, Mr. Webb had given Mr. Thompson the gun as Thompson was driving the senator to the airport, and then Thompson simply forgot he was carrying it. Thompson was not charged in the incident.

Shucard graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile, and he worked for 17 months as a staff assistant for former Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut.

• This report includes material from The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Congressional aide charged after allegedly bringing pistol to House building
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0718/Congressional-aide-charged-after-allegedly-bringing-pistol-to-House-building
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe