Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The mass murder in Sandy Hook has spurred an effort, not always successful in the past, to bum-rush gun restriction legislation through both the U.S. Congress and Connecticut’s General Assembly. State gun control laws, as a general rule, are far less successful than national laws because the effective reach of state laws ends at the border. Criminals bent on mayhem may acquire weapons “illegal” in Connecticut by purchasing them outside the state, acquiring weapons on the black market or simply stealing them in states in which laws are less restrictive than those of Connecticut. National gun control laws would be uniform and apply in every state in the union. Connecticut’s gun control laws , the fourth most restrictive in the nation, were not successful in preventing a murderous assault by Adam Lanza on the Sandy Hook Elementary school in which 6 faculty members and 20 children were cruelly slaughtered in two classrooms by a determined murderer who apparently stole an arsenal of we...