Gun Rights Advocate Martha Dean Enters Connecticut Governor's Race

Martha Dean (Courtesy of Chion Wolf/WNPR / March 11, 2014)

The Courant

Gun rights supporter Martha Dean shook up the Republican primary for governor Tuesday, unexpectedly announcing she was entering the crowded field.

A former two-time statewide candidate, Dean has been working recently with fellow attorneys who are representing gun owners in their battle against the state's new gun laws.

The word about Dean initially trickled out from the pro-gun Connecticut Citizens Defense League, which released the news on the group's blog. Dean confirmed later that she is running, but she declined to answer any questions about her strategy or the campaign. She said she will not conduct any interviews until speaking Tuesday at a time and place that will be announced in the coming days.

Dean's entrance would be late, particularly for fundraising, because she would need 2,500 contributors at $100 each to qualify for the public financing matching funds for gubernatorial candidates. Political operatives say that raising that amount of money — particularly with just two months before the convention — is much more difficult than it appears.

This should give us a good idea of how many gun-rights folks there really are in CT. 

More on the Connecticut Scofflaws

The Day

Since the first day of this year, thousands of otherwise law-abiding Connecticut residents - at least 20,000 and maybe as many as 100,000 - have become criminals. They have broken a new state law that required owners of military-style rifles and high capacity magazines to register them with the State Police by last Dec. 31. 

Some of these rifle owners - there's no way of knowing for sure how many - may not have been aware that the rifles and high capacity magazines they had owned for months or years now have to be registered. 

Other gun owners simply missed the deadline, while some are deliberately choosing to disobey the law.

Failure to register the rifle or its high capacity magazines is a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. A sentence of this magnitude would be unheard of for a first-time offender, but committing a felony is serious and a blot on an otherwise clean record that would not be without consequences.

Since the intent of the law is to create a record and track these weapons, not to make criminals of gun owners, we would urge the administration and the legislature to find some way to provide a bit more time for registration.

No one should take any joy in having 20,000 or 100,000 citizens suddenly becoming criminals. If possible, a way should be be found to allow these gun owners a chance to reconsider and follow the law.

As to those who sincerely believe the requirement is wrong, we respect their beliefs, but that does mean they can disobey this law or any law.

There are several interesting points in this piece.  The first and foremost is the numbers of those guilty of non-compliance.  20,000 to 100,000 is a far cry from the exaggerated numbers we've heard from some pro-gun fanatics who want to artificially inflate the civil disobedience aspect of this issue.

Secondly, this reasonable take on the situation fairly points out that not all the "unconvicted felons" are acting out of resistance to the new law. 

Also fairly depicted is the fact that the sanctions for non-compliance include "UP TO five years in prison which would be unheard of for first time offenders."  That's also quite different from the hysterical and exaggerated nonsense we've been hearing from the fanatics.

And finally, there's a reasonable and fair observation of the state's motivations. "No one should take any joy in having 20,000 or 100,000 citizens suddenly becoming criminals. If possible, a way should be be found to allow these gun owners a chance to reconsider and follow the law." 

Huge Difference Between Connecticut's Registered Guns and Estimated Totals

Link

How many large capacity magazines are there in Connecticut?
We were unable to find this number, but the NSSF estimates that it could be in the tens of millions. NSSF used the following methodology to arrive at this figure.
Based on Connecticut's percentage of National Instant Criminal Background Check System checks in the Unites States, NSSF estimated that the number of firearms owned by Connecticut residents is about three million. About one million of these firearms are handguns, of which 21%, or 231,000 use large capacity magazines. About 1.2 million are rifles, of which 30%, or 372,000 use large capacity magazines. Assuming four magazines owned for every firearm (assuming every firearm comes standard with at least two magazines), NSSF asserts there are over 2.4 million large capacity magazines in Connecticut that originated at the retail level. The NSSF final figure is larger than this because it counts firearms already in the state and those not purchased at the retail level.

Link

More than 50,000 so-called ‘assault weapons’ were registered in Connecticut by the December 31st deadline under the new gun law.

However, apparently hundreds more people attempted to file at the last minute, but got stopped by the post office.

News 8 reported to you several times about the long lines of gun owners at the end of last year, lining up to comply with the state’s new gun registration requirements passed in the aftermath of the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

While final official numbers are not expected for a few more weeks, the State Police report that as of today, a total of just over 50,000 so-called assault weapons have been registered and 38,000 high capacity ammunition magazines.

Apparently there were several hundred more Connecticut residents that attempted to file the proper applications, but missed the deadline because the post office closed early on New Year’s Eve and their applications were postmarked in January.

Links provided by ssgmarkcr with the following observation: "Some are trying to paint this as people waiting till the last minute, but it seems to me that its more likely that such a low level of items registered is a whole bunch of people deciding to say hell no."

Connecticut Gun Laws Constitutional Says Federal Judge

Jessica Hill, File/Associated Press - File-This May 4, 2011, shows Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy speaking after signing a two-year $40.1 billion budget bill into law at the Capitol in Hartford, Conn. A federal judge upheld Connecticut’s gun control law on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014, saying the sweeping measure is constitutional even as he acknowledged the Second Amendment rights of gun owners who sued to block it. 

The Washington Post

A federal judge upheld Connecticut’s gun control law on Thursday, saying the sweeping measure is constitutional even as he acknowledged the Second Amendment rights of gun owners who sued to block it.

The law, which Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed last April after months of negotiations in the legislature, was not entirely written “with the utmost clarity,” U.S. District Judge Alfred Covello said in his 47-page decision. Still, several provisions are “not impermissibly vague in all of their applications and, therefore, the challenged portions of the legislation are not unconstitutionally vague.”

Lawmakers, responding to the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 children and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012, banned the sale of large-capacity magazines and made more weapons illegal under the state’s assault weapons ban.

“While the act burdens the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, it is substantially related to the important governmental interest of public safety and crime control,” Covello ruled.

The Poor Persecuted Connecticut Gun Owners

The Day Connecticut editorial

Saddled by what they feel are the most restrictive weapons laws in the nation, some Connecticut gun owners are champing at the bit for next year's gubernatorial election, when they hope to put in office someone whose views of the Second Amendment are more closely aligned with their own.

There's just one problem, as The Connecticut Mirror, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news website reported last week: None of the leading candidates, especially Democratic incumbent Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, appears likely to support overturning the state's strict controls over the purchase of guns, ammunition and large-capacity magazines.

After all, the governor himself championed the new restrictions and became one of the most visible and ardent advocates for tough gun legislation after the December 2012 shooting massacre at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School left 20 youngsters and six adults dead.

When the Right to Bear Arms Includes the Mentally Ill

Mark Russo

The New York Times

Last April, workers at Middlesex Hospital in Connecticut called the police to report that a psychiatric patient named Mark Russo had threatened to shoot his mother if officers tried to take the 18 rifles and shotguns he kept at her house. Mr. Russo, who was off his medication for paranoid schizophrenia, also talked about the recent elementary school massacre in Newtown and told a nurse that he “could take a chair and kill you or bash your head in between the eyes,” court records show.

The police seized the firearms, as well as seven high-capacity magazines, but Mr. Russo, 55, was eventually allowed to return to the trailer in Middletown where he lives alone. In an interview there recently, he denied that he had schizophrenia but said he was taking his medication now — though only “the smallest dose,” because he is forced to. His hospitalization, he explained, stemmed from a misunderstanding: Seeking a message from God on whether to dissociate himself from his family, he had stabbed a basketball and waited for it to reinflate itself. When it did, he told relatives they would not be seeing him again, prompting them to call the police.

As for his guns, Mr. Russo is scheduled to get them back in the spring, as mandated by Connecticut law.

“I don’t think they ever should have been taken out of my house,” he said. “I plan to get all my guns and ammo and knives back in April.”

The Russo case highlights a central, unresolved issue in the debate over balancing public safety and the Second Amendment right to bear arms: just how powerless law enforcement can be when it comes to keeping firearms out of the hands of people who are mentally ill.

Connecticut’s law giving the police broad leeway to seize and hold guns for up to a year is actually relatively strict. Most states simply adhere to the federal standard, banning gun possession only after someone is involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility or designated as mentally ill or incompetent after a court proceeding or other formal legal process. Relatively few with mental health issues, even serious ones, reach this point.

Connecticut Accidental Shooting Death - One Dead - One Arrested

(Melanie Stengel - New Haven Register) New Haven Police Chief, Dean Esserman stands with the family of Shamar Willet during a press conference at police Headquarters. Shunravion Jackson of Norton Street is charged with second-degree manslaughter and interfering with police, in the shooting death of Willet. 

New Haven Register

Shunravion Jackson, 18, of Norton Street, was charged with second-degree manslaughter shortly after he said those words in a statement to detectives, according to a police report. He allegedly shot and killed his sister’s boyfriend’s brother ,Shamar Willett, 23, 35 Harding Place, by accident while the two horsed around Saturday afternoon.

Things not to do when you want to get away with killing someone by accident:

1. don't be black
2. don't lie to the police, especially if one of those lies is you were smoking pot at the time of the shooting
3. don't be from Connecticut

Connecticut Laws Upheld in Big Defeat for Gun Rights

boston dot com

A federal judge has dismissed a gun industry group lawsuit challenging a wide-ranging firearms law passed by Connecticut in response to the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in New Haven ruled Monday that the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc. does not have legal standing to challenge how the legislature and governor approved the law in April.

The foundation sued Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, legislative leaders and other officials in July, claiming the ‘‘emergency’’ legislation was approved illegally without proper public input, without time for adequate review by lawmakers and without an explanation of why the usual legislative process needed to be bypassed.

The law, which expanded a ban on assault weapons and prohibits large-capacity ammunition magazines, still faces other legal challenges by gun rights advocates.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation is considering whether to appeal Hall’s ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, said Lawrence Keane, the foundation’s senior vice president and general counsel.

‘‘We’re obviously disappointed,’’ Keane said Tuesday. ‘‘The legislature voted on a 139-page bill that they never read, and we were denied our First Amendment right to advocate for changes in the actual bill that was voted on.’’

Connecticut Gun Owner Arrested For Stockpiling 274 Guns, Ammunition, Chemicals

Opposing Views

Connecticut Concealed Carry Permit Holder Shoots Part of His Hand Off

Stamford Advocate

Police are investigating what they believe to be an accidental shooting Friday evening when a man in the Cove shot his right hand while dismantling a semiautomatic hand gun.

 Lt. Diedrich Hohn said police were called to 12 Soundview Ave. on the report of a man shooting himself. 

When police arrived, they found a 34-year-old man who had blown part of his right hand off.

Hohn said the man said he did not realize that one bullet was in the chamber when he was taking the gun apart.

The slug was fired into the man's right palm and traveled under the skin, exiting through his pinky finger. The slug then went through a wall and lodged in a bedroom bureau, where it was recovered by police. 

The man was taken to Stamford Hospital, where he underwent reconstructive surgery. Hohn said police are investigating the shooting, but it appears to be an accidental discharge. The man was cooperative throughout and admitted that he made a mistake when he pulled the trigger of the gun while taking it apart, not realizing that one bullet was ready for firing in the chamber. 

Hohn said the man has probably lost part or all of his pinky finger. 

Police took the man's valid permit to carry a concealed handgun and seized the handgun for safekeeping, as well as a shotgun also kept in the house. 

Hohn said State Police will review his permit to determine if his permit will be returned and a hearing will be held in the matter. No charges have been filed in the case.

Sneeze Leads to Accidental Shooting and Gun Confiscation in Connecticut

 Local news reports

Police in Connecticut say an 81-year-old man who was lying in wait with a rifle for a pesky raccoon accidentally shot himself after sneezing and falling from a chair.

New Haven police say James Pace Sr. shot himself in the shin at his home Saturday night. The injury wasn’t life-threatening.



Pace told authorities that a raccoon had been scratching at his back door for several days and he was waiting for it with a .22-caliber rifle. Police say he sneezed and fell from his chair, then realized he had accidentally shot himself.




Police detectives seized the rifle and are investigating the incident.

Connecticut Gun Control Laws

ABC Local

Adults 18 years and older can begin applying for the long gun eligibility certificates, which require completion of an instructional course and state and federal background checks. Those certificates or a valid state-issued gun permit will be required as of April 1, 2014, for anyone who buys or receives a long gun. The certificate will be good for five years.

Beginning Monday, adults 18 years and older can apply for the new ammunition certificate, which will require a national criminal background check. Starting Oct. 1, the sale of ammunition and ammunition magazines will be generally prohibited unless the buyer shows an ammunition certificate and a driver's license or other valid identification or has a handgun permit, gun dealer sale permit or long gun or handgun eligibility certificate.

People who've been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility, however, will now have to wait longer for such permits. Mary Kate Mason, a spokeswoman for the Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services, said the agency has always reported involuntary commitments to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System that occurred over the last 12 months. Under the new law, that review period will be extended to the previous 60 months.

Well, that's a little more like it. What do you think?

Nancy Lanza's Gun Shop Loses License

A truck advertised the Riverview Gun Sales shop in East Windsor, Conn. on December 21, 2012; the shop has lost its federal firearms license. / John Moore/Getty Images 

CBS

A Connecticut shop that sold a gun to Nancy Lanza, the Newtown school shooter's mother, has lost its federal firearms license.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revoked the license of Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor in December 2012. The agency didn't say why.

Why do you think?

Connecticut Moving Towards Tougher Gun Laws

 
 Reuters/Reuters - Residents protest outside the National Shooting Sports Foundation in Newtown, Connecticut March 28, 2013 after receiving robocalls from the NRA, trying to enlist them in efforts to defeat new statewide gun control proposals. REUTERS/ Michelle McLoughlin

Yahoo News reports

Legislative leaders in Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in December, said on Monday they had agreed some of the toughest gun regulations in the nation and expected to adopt them this week.

The proposal, which is expected to pass both Democratic-controlled houses of the state legislature this week and become law, includes a ban on sales of high-capacity ammunition magazines, background checks for private gun sales and a registry for existing magazines that carry 10 or more bullets.

 

The proposed legislation creates a state-issued eligibility certificate for the purchase of any rifle, shotgun or ammunition. A buyer would need to be fingerprinted, take a firearms training course and undergo a background check to qualify.

The measure not only bans the sale of high-capacity magazines from January 1, 2014, but such magazines that exist now must be registered with the state by that date, or it will become a felony to own them.

The outrage in Connecticut is naturally greater than in other states.  But only lying, self-serving gun fanatics can deny that high-capacity magazines directly add to the death toll in mass shootings, Lanza and Loughner being the clearest examples.
 
What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Connecticut Woman Kills her Two Young Grandsons and Herself

PRESTON, Conn. (CBSNewYork/AP)

Local news reports

The family of two young boys killed in an apparent-murder suicide — and state police — said Thursday they want to know why the boys' grandmother, with an apparent history of mental health problems, had access to the revolver used in the shooting. 

 The shooting has added urgency to a legislative review of access to guns that is already under way in Connecticut, where a troubled 20-year-old man gunned down 26 people, including 20 first-graders, on the opposite side of the state at a Newtown school on Dec. 14. 

 The two boys' grandmother, 47-year-old Debra Denison, was supposed to take them from a day care to a birthday party Tuesday but instead drove to a nearby lake where she and the children were found shot to death after a frantic search. Police said the gun had been taken from her home, and one relative said it apparently belonged to Denison's husband.

Should Mr. Denison bear any of the responsibility for this?

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

More about the Connecticut School Shooting

The Chicago Tribune reports with video of the medical examiner's statement.

The mystery deepened as Newtown education officials said they had found no link between Lanza's mother and the school, contrary to news reports that said she was a teacher there. Investigators said they believe Adam Lanza attended Sandy Hook Elementary many years ago, but they had no explanation for why he went there on Friday.

Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared, then drove to the school in her car with at least three of her guns, forced his way inside and opened fire in two classrooms, authorities said. Within minutes, he killed 20 children, six adults and himself.

On Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver said all the victims at the school were killed up close with a rifle and were shot more than once. All six adults killed at the school were women. Of the 20 children, eight were boys and 12 were girls. All the children were 6 or 7 years old.

So, his mother did not work at the school, but he himself had been a student there.  Also, contrary to earlier reports, a long gun was used.

Adam Lanza - Connecticut Shooter

Yahoo News reports

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother. 

This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then driving to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with at least two handguns and at least one semi-automatic rifle. 

There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot and killed 20 children, who President Obama later described as between five and 10 years of age. Six adults were also killed at the school. Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home.

Connecticut School Shooting - 27 Dead including 20 Children

The Chicago Tribune reports

The suspect in the Connecticut school shootings that killed 26 people is a 20-year-old and his brother is being held for questioning, a law enforcement official said Friday. Sources had earlier identified the shooter as a 24-year-old.

The law enforcement official says the boys' mother, Nancy Lanza, worked at the school as a teacher and is presumed dead.
 
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the suspect is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.

According to the official, the suspect drove to the scene of the shootings in his mother's car. Three guns were found at the scene — a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols — and a .223-caliber rifle. The rifle was recovered from the back of a car at the school. The two pistols were recovered from inside the school.

The dead included 20 children and six adults. The gunman was also dead.

I have no words.

Another School Shooting!

How many of these have happened so far this week? Isn't mass shooting becoming a daily event in the US?




Ah, the price of freedom!

Don't scenes like this make you so proud to be American?

Connecticut Gun Owner Kills His Own Son

ABC News reports

A Connecticut teacher shot a masked and knife-wielding person during a late-night confronation outside his sister's home when she believed she was being robbed. But Jeffrey Giuliano, 44, didn't realize that he had gunned down and killed his teenage son until the boy was identified by authorities. 

Police responding to a possible burglary attempt pulled up to a house in New Fairfield at 1 a.m. Thursday to find the local 5th grade teacher, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, sitting on the lawn outside his sister's home (the two lived next door). Dead in the driveway was his 15-year-old son, Tyler. 

Lieutenant J. Paul Vance said that Tyler was found with obvious gunshot wounds and was holding a weapon. Police later specified that the "weapon in possession of the deceased at the time of this incident was determined by troopers to be a knife." 

"We received a call reporting possible burglary and shots fired," Vance told ABC News. "He was shot multiple times, but we still don't know the number of times or the location."

On the great blog TTAG, they strongly advise people who shoot others to STFU. But if you're going to say something, the key word is always "lunged" if a knife is involved. This, they think, justifies shooting someone several times in the chest.

The nightmare irony in this case is the vigilante gun owner killed his own son. Sad, pathetic, sick and predictable.  The chances of a homeowner in a low-crime area like this one ever needing to use the gun to save the day is lower by far than the chance that someday the gun will be misused.

This is an extreme example of that.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.