Letter To The Editor: Action Is Needed On Gun Control Legislation

To the Editor:

Once again we have witnessed two young men with a history of making violent threats online (both killed cats for fun too) open fire on and kill innocent people with a semi-automatic rifle in a public place. And once again politicians beholden to the NRA death cult don't want to fix the problem and are hoping we will just forget about it until the next mass shooting.

I remember when the news broke that 26 women and children had been murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School and my first thought was "Connecticut just had it's own Dunblane!". Dunblane is a village in Scotland that made world-wide news in 1996 when a 43 year old man killed 16 kindergarten aged children, their teacher, and injured 15 others before he killed himself. The massacre inspired a public campaign that became known as the "Snowdrop Campaign '' and it inspired the UK to pass among the strictest firearms laws in the world. The UK has not been subject to another mass shooting where a handgun was involved since, and gun-related homicides are now extremely rare.

Sadly members of Congress decided that being endorsed by the NRA mattered more than the lives of 26 women and children here in the United States and no new firearms laws were passed at the federal level. And since that year Congress failed to act, the number of mass shootings in our nation has nearly tripled. The AR-15 rifle, or variants of the AR-15 rifle, has been used in at least a dozen mass shootings since the federal ban on selling them to civilians expired in 2004, and the original 1994 federal ban was due to a mass shooting at an elementary school in Stockton California in 1989 where a bigoted, alcoholic drifter killed 6 children between the ages of 5 and 9 with a semi-automatic rifle because they were Asian.

The politicians beholden to the NRA death cult that I mentioned above aren't just in Washington DC though, they can be found right here in Fairfield Connecticut. Our State Senator Tony Hwang held what amounted to be a campaign kickoff disguised as an "interfaith vigil" with a statement on the invite page saying "No Politics, No Rancor," would be allowed at the event, which is pretty ironic coming from an elected official and one who voted last year against strengthening our state's Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law to include people who have committed animal cruelty. The two most recent mass shooters had a history of animal cruelty, although I can't ask Senator Hwang why he is fine with sickos harming animals having a fire arm since he has blocked me on social media.

Our First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick was asked by a constituent to declare June 3rd Gun Violence Awareness Day in the Town of Fairfield, to which she agreed, and to read that proclamation aloud at the above mentioned "interfaith vigil" to school age children who are rightfully scared of their schools becoming a warzone and she responded “I will not do that as it is not my job. I can’t promise them safety while in school. It is not the responsibility of a First Selectwoman. This is for lawmakers to do, not mine”. The First Selectwoman had no qualms back in 2020 with taking part in lobbying legislators with the town police department over a bill being voted on in the General Assembly and she had no problem trying to cut the town Board of Education's budget.

Both of them have also expressed support for Gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski, who has an "A" rating from the NRA and has said he would support bills that would roll back the gun safety laws that were passed after Sandy Hook.

I for one am sick and tired of feckless politicians who speak out of both sides of their mouths, offer "thoughts and prayers" but do nothing to make the public safer, and then play the victim when they are called out on doing nothing. The only victims here are the men, women, and children who continue to be needlessly slaughtered because of the inaction of lawmakers beholden to the NRA death cult.

Leanne Harpin
Fairfield, CT