Speaker Ryan slams House sit-in as a 'stunt'

House Speaker Paul Ryan.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A visibly irritated House Speaker Paul Ryan addressed House Democrats' 16-hour sit-in on the lower chamber floor over gun-control measures in his weekly press briefing Thursday. "We are not going to allow stunts like this to stop us from carrying out the people's business," Ryan said, slamming the Democrats' effort as nothing more than a fundraising ploy. "[Democrats] are not trying to actually get this done through regular order. No, instead they're staging protests. They're trying to get on TV."

He also explained that Democrats had proposed Wednesday the gun measure they were fighting for, and it failed by a bipartisan vote in committee. "In this country, we do not take away people's constitutional rights without due process," Ryan said, before turning the focus to the threat of terror. "Our focus needs to be on confronting radical extremism."

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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.