Major R. Owens, former congressman, dies at 77 Mr. Owens, a Democrat, was first elected to the House in 1982 and boasted of his progressive voting record at a time when passionate liberals often found themselves on the fringes of power. He championed universal health care, education funding and minimum-wage legislation, and fought to repeal gun rights, even publicly voicing his support to eliminate the Second Amendment because of the increased gun violence in schools. "I'm all alone on this one," he once said. It was not the first or last time he found himself without overwhelming support. Song became "an outlet for political frustrations," he said. He used the well of the House to criticize state and city officials for using eminent domain to transfer property from one landowner to another, at what he considered the expensive of the working poor. He opposed the massive Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn and rendered it this way: Fight the pain defeat the strain rally all together destroy eminent domain. Monster on the street grabs any home to eat greedy rape the snakes repeat. Having assailed U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, Mr. Owens went to the House floor shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and denounced the impending conflict: Stop the war We need the cash Give Medicaid families All of Rumsfeld's stash Throw the body bags into the trash. When not condemning conservative policy or action, Mr. Owens was sometimes an outsider within his party. After several terms in the New York Senate, he ran in 1982 to succeed the retiring Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress. Chisholm and the Brooklyn Democratic Party organization backed another state senator, Vander L. Beatty, whose flamboyance and skill as a party operative made Mr. Owens appear reserved and professorial by comparison. Despite his energetic campaign, Beatty was tainted by accusations of voter fraud and other irregularities, and was subsequently convicted of those charges. He was fatally shot in 1990 while attempting a political comeback. In Congress, Mr. Owens rose in the 1980s through the Education and Labor Committee and chaired its subcommittee on select education and civil rights. He helped shepherd the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which broadened civil rights already protected in earlier legislation, as well as bills to reauthorize grants to help the disabled with job training. With the Republican takeover of the House in 1995, Mr. Owens struggled to advance bills to protect minimum wage increases and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In 2003, Mr. Owens became one of the first members of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse the Democratic presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, an internist who emphasized health-care legislation and who was a vociferous opponent of the Iraq war.