The premise of Connecticut’s new gun control legislation is
that crimes committed illegally with guns may be controlled by such measures as
requiring once licit gun owners to register their guns. That premise is
doubtful, to say the least.
Connecticut’s new gun control legislation felonizes the
ownership of a gun that has not been reported to the state police. According to
recent stories, the state is awash in new felons, none of whom have committed
violent crimes with their weapons. Among the new felons are some who have
failed to register their guns from inadvertence, others who have failed to register
for reasons of principle, and still others who are determined to treat the new
law in the same way as those who drive cars with expired licenses. This last
group is willing to spin the roulette wheel, knowing in advance that they are
not likely to commit crimes and so come to the notice of an arresting
authority.
The number of gun owners in Connecticut who have not
registered their guns within the time allotted by the new bill is astonishing.
State police, a Hartford paper reported,
had received nearly 50,000 applications for assault weapons certificates by the
end of 2013, a figure that represents as little as 15 percent of those who own
guns classified as “assault weapons” under the new law. The “assault weapons”
classification itself has been questioned by gun groups. If an “assault weapon”
is any weapon used in an assault, the list of prohibited weapons in the new
bill is much too short.
Mr. Resto came by his prison title “The Razor” because his
assault weapon of choice, when he wished to shake down a drug dealer, was an
assault razor. But “The Razor,” once released from prison, easily managed to
acquire a gun obtained illegally, as well as hollow nosed bullets, also illegal,
to murder Ibraham Ghazal, a store keeper in Median. Mr. Resto, a graduate of
prison czar Mike Lawlor’s Orwellian titled Earned Risk Reduction Credits program,
agreed to a plea bargain in which five more years might have been added to his
sentence of fifty three years because he had used an illegally acquired assault
weapon to murder Mr. Ghazal – but the weapons charge was not a part of Mr. Resto’s plea agreement. It is unclear why or at whose insistence the weapons charge was dropped from the final agreement.
It is highly curious, however, that a state seemingly interested in protecting
its citizens from law abiding gun owners who have no intention of committing violent
crimes should have dropped from a plea agreement a weapons charge that could
have added five years to the sentence of a violent murderer. A plea agreement
that did not expunge the weapons charge might have convinced some recently
felonized gun owners that the state of Connecticut truly was interested in
prosecuting the illegal, violent and criminal use of guns.
Violent criminals such as Mr. Resto – who burned his
mattress while in prison and gave other indications that he was an incorrigible
gang-banger upon whom Mr. Lawlor’s ill-conceived get out of jail early program
would have no effect at all – can acquire banned weapons as easily as they
acquired Mr. Lawlor’s UNEARNED Risk Reduction Credits, which were distributed
retroactively to thousands of prisoners. Mr. Lawlor’s program was not vetted by
relevant legislative committees. Instead, the former co-chair of the Judiciary
Committee attached his program to an omnibus implementer bill at the end of a
legislative session. Attempts by Republicans to exempt violent criminals from
the program have been rebuffed by Mr. Malloy, Mr. Lawlor and Democratic leaders
in the General Assembly, most of whom will be claiming implausibly during the
upcoming elections that Republicans are waging a fictitious war on women. Mr.
Lawlor’s program awards “Risk Reduction Credits” to violent criminals convicted
of sexual assault in the first degree, assault on a pregnant woman, kidnapping
in the first degree, and other violent crimes committed against women. For whom, it should be asked, do Mr. Lawlor’s credits reduce risks?
These are the festering lilies of the one-party state: A
poorly constructed bill is smuggled through the General Assembly by an arrogant
and unresponsive former co-chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee; Mr.
Lawlor’s judiciary co-chair in the state senate, Andrew McDonald, is awarded a
seat on Connecticut’s Supreme Court (Mr. Lawlor and Mr. McDonald, it may be
recalled, were largely responsible for the passage of a bill abolishing
Connecticut’s death penalty -- shortly after a mass murder in Cheshire and
months before another mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School); productive Connecticut
citizens are over taxed by a spendthrift Democratic dominated General Assembly
after the first Democratic governor since William O’Neill declines to invite
elected Republican leaders to a budget negotiation process conducted largely in
secret by Mr. Malloy and tax hungry leaders of SEBAC, a politically connected
union group; a criminal report that should have been made available in camera to legislators writing a bill
on assault weapons is unaccountably delayed; Freedom of Information regulations
are under unremitting attack. And what is done and left undone by Mr. Malloy’s
administration, acting always in concert with other Malloyalists in the General
Assembly, remains hidden behind an iron wall of secrecy and dissimulation.
A media alive to the baleful effects of the one-party state
would allow none of this – ever, ever, ever. But Connecticut’s largely somnolent
media awakens only when the Malloyalist Molotov
cocktail penetrates their usually safe corner of the political barracks. And so
Connecticut progresses ever forward, its progressive pennants flapping in the
wind -- Detroit or Bust!
Comments
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Navy veteran and firefighter John Cinque, who made national news after telling state lawmakers he would not comply with gun registration, briefly commented on the officer’s statements in a discussion with gubernatorial candidate Joe Visconti last Friday.
“I’ve had contact with a police officer in my home town, I live in Branford, and his words straight out were, ‘I cannot wait to get the order to kick your door in,’” Cinque said.
In mention of Resto it was mentioned that "hollow tipped" bullets are illegal.
This is not true.