Connecticut Legislature Responds To the Sandy Hook Tragedy

   Congratulations to the state legislature of Connecticut, who responded to last December's Newtown tragedy by voting in on Wednesday the nation's toughest state gun laws to date. In a strong, bipartisan response to the nightmare at Sandy Hook Elementary school, governor Dan Malloy signed the bill into law on Thursday morning.

   The new laws include an abundance of firearm checks and balances that nearly all recent polls show are now favored by most Americans, including many National Rifle Association members. Universal criminal background surveys will now be de rigueur for all firearm purchases, and anyone who carries a prior firearm conviction has to register with the state. A certificate of eligibility will be required for rifle and shotgun purchases, and the state ban on certain assault weapons was broadened. And importantly, the final package limits the legal limit of magazine capacity to ten rounds, an obvious nod to the fact that the more often a James Holmes or Adam Lanza has to reload, the more time the potential victims and heroes have to either escape or subdue the killer.

   And in answer to all the complaints about the work and expense these new common-sense laws will entail, maybe we should let any person drive automobiles anywhere, anytime with no regard of their driving history, felony records, at-fault accident commission, DUIs, etc. Americans have to understand, as most do now due to the many gun-related tragedies of the past few years (including all the ones that don't attain the high profiles of Aurora or Virginia Tech), that the idea of ANYONE having the right to own an implement that's sole purpose is to injure or kill is as irrational as allowing ANYONE to operate a potentially even more-dangerous motor vehicle.        

   The NRA didn't do itself any favors over the last few weeks by amazingly allowing its ongoing series of state-by-state anti-gun control legislation robocalls to ring at Newtown residences (how would you like to be the grieving parent on the other end of THAT call?) These automated messages, many of them repeat-calls to the same households, serve as just another in a long line of examples of the extreme callousness of this organization, which has left decades-behind its former roles of promoting safe, sportsmanlike conservation practices among our youthful woodsmen, as well as protecting adult hunters' rights. Instead we get chairman Wayne LaPierre's crazy proclamations for armed guards in every school, along with continuous frothing claims that America's Second Amendment rights are under attack, as are all of our nations' citizens from the federal government.

   The not-so-amusing irony of this charade is while LaPierre and his institution promote an unfettered, unregulated path for virtually anyone to obtain firearms and assault ordnance to protect themselves from a federal totalitarian takeover of the country, on the other hand he advocates that same government, in the form of police officers, patrolling our schools to protect us from those same armed citizens.

   And yes, we all know that Connecticut's new statutes, along with all the similar laws being enacted by other states like New York and Colorado, aren't going to totally stem the tide of violent bullet-headed evil that our nation sadly leads the industrialized world in commission. But they'll undeniably do more good than Arkansas's goofy legislation enacted in February allowing concealed weapons in churches and college campuses, which must have gladdened LaPierre's heart. And in the so-far absence of more umbrella legislation from the federal government, it may turn out to be up to the individual states themselves to enact common sense laws that finally a majority of Americans favor, namely background checks and limits on assault weapons, which no self-respecting hunter needs anyway.

   With a Democrat-controlled House and Senate the passage of this bill was assured. But it was nice to see the bipartisan nature of  the voting within both bodies, although obviously influenced by the close proximity of the massacre of those 20 little children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook. Republican Senate minority leader John McKinney's moving words were a far cry from anything you'll get from Lapierre and his ilk the day before the vote: “I wake up in the morning and put this green ribbon and pin on my jacket lapel to remember those we’ve lost. And what I’m proud of is that all of us, Republicans and Democrats, understood that some issues, and this one particularly, should rise above politics.”

   And this time anyway, it did. And we'll all see starting Monday April 8 if, unlike the fine example set last Thursday, the conservative-driven gridlock continues unabated in Washington, as the Senate finally takes up what will be several weeks of debate on federal gun legislation. Hopefully they'll take at least a page or two from Connecticut's playbook.