Rep. Mike Michaud was caught in an election-year trap set by Republican leaders. We believe he made the wrong choice to get out of it.

On Sept. 29, the House of Representatives voted to end the District of Columbia’s tight gun laws. In a vote of 250-171, including a yes from Michaud, the House voted to overrule local governmental control and allow handguns and semiautomatic weapons back into the city. The bill also prevents the D.C. government from passing gun laws that are tougher than federal standards.

The measure has slim prospects in the Senate, thank goodness.

This vote doesn’t make a hill-of-beans difference to people living in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. There’s no effort here to enact similar legislation and, if there were, it likely would be soundly defeated. Much of Michaud’s district is rural and the gun laws that make sense here don’t make sense in an urban environment like Washington, where gun violence is an enormous problem.

Advocates for the measure say district residents should have the same right to protect themselves as people living elsewhere. They should also have the same right of self-governance and self-determination. But people living in Washington must bow to the whims of a sometimes dictatorial Congress, a legislative body in which they have no voting representative.

Supporters say the bill protects the Second Amendment rights of district residents and that the gun ban has been a miserable failure since it passed in 1976. But, as Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia said in opposition to the bill, 97 percent of the guns used in D.C. crimes come from outside the city. He also said that the issue should be left to the city council.

It was a tough vote for Michaud, and that’s what Republican House leaders wanted. The goal of the bill was to put Democrats from rural districts on the spot. It worked.

Michaud remains in the good graces of the gun-rights crowd, but he has let down the residents of Washington. Of course, he doesn’t live there.