Major gun control bill passes key Connecticut committee

On the day after another mass shooting at a Tennessee elementary school, a key Connecticut committee voted Tuesday in favor of a comprehensive series of restrictions in Gov. Ned Lamont’s gun control package.

Lamont’s proposals call for preventing those under 21 from buying any gun, requiring registration of previously grandfathered assault weapons, increasing safe storage requirements in the home and hiking penalties regarding large-capacity magazines. Lamont is also pushing for mandating the registration of all ghost guns, handmade weapons that can be constructed with parts and instructions that are available over the internet or with 3D printers.

The proposals, known as House Bill 6667, include banning the “open carry” of a gun and preventing anyone from buying more than one handgun per month. The purchasing restriction is designed to reduce “straw” purchases in which a person might buy 20 guns and then sell them on the streets — often to convicted criminals who are not eligible to purchase a gun legally due to their criminal record.

Although Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and is among the safest states, Lamont and his supporters say it is not enough.

Democrats who control the committee voted in favor of the measures, while Republicans said the ideas would not prevent mass shootings.

Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat who co-chairs the judiciary committee, immediately noted this week’s shootings at a private Christian elementary school in Tennessee that killed three children and three adults.

“We don’t need to go back any further than yesterday to see that gun violence is a scourge on our nation,” Stafstrom said Tuesday. “We are thankful in Connecticut that we have not had a mass shooting … in the last 10 years since Sandy Hook. … We need to crack down on those who are illegally in possession of firearms.”

But Republicans strongly defended gun rights, offering amendments that would have rejected Lamont’s 97-page bill and erased its provisions. Those amendments, though, were sharply rejected by the Democratic majority on the committee.

Rep. Craig Fishbein, the committee’s ranking House Republican, said that no one from Lamont’s administration or the state police testified in front of the committee to explain and defend the controversial bill.

“Sandy Hook was a tragedy — something these many years past I think about all too often,” Fishbein said, adding that 30 different laws were broken by Adam Lanza, the shooter at the elementary school.

Now known as a conservative Republican, Fishbein said he has changed his views through the years.

“I was an anti-gun individual,” Fishbein told committee members. “I didn’t think anyone should own a firearm. But I’ve changed. … We allow hunting with handguns in a state forest, but an individual who is permitted by the government to carry a handgun for personal protection loses their right when they enter the forest.”

Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican attorney from Chaplin in eastern Connecticut, said that the nearby states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have “constitutional carry,” which means that citizens do not need a gun permit.

Connecticut’s extensive gun restrictions do not “make us any safer than Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont,” Dubitsky said, adding that it is a “birthright” to carry a gun. ”Connecticut is going backwards.”

Dubitsky added, “This bill is tyranny. This bill is directed at disarming the law-abiding people of this state. You would think the people would have learned from history about what disarming the people can bring. … It happened in the Ottoman Empire. … The Soviet Union. … The same thing happened in Nazi Germany, in China. … It all started the same way, and it all ended the same way.”

Dubitsky rejected Lamont’s proposal for buying one gun per month, saying that the government would never tell citizens that they could buy only one book or newspaper per month.

Sen. Rob Sampson, among the most conservative Republicans in the legislature, said “there is no data” that eliminating the requirement for a pistol permit “has a negative impact on crime.”

Sampson added, “It seems like any time there’s a tragedy, the go-to answer is more gun control. There are violent murders in our state on a regular basis, and they are rarely discussed in this committee. … We certainly mourn for the people who were killed in that terrible tragedy” in Tennessee. “We don’t need politics. We need reasonable policy debates. … I wonder if people are aware of the FBI statistics that more people are murdered by bare hands than by long guns.”

Regarding Sandy Hook, Sampson said, “It’s pure luck that we have not had another tragedy like that.”

But Democrats sharply rejected a Republican amendment for constitutional carry by 23-12, noting that Connecticut is considered among the safest states nationally.

Banning “open carry” is important, Stafstrom said, “to allow law enforcement an additional tool to stop and talk to someone” with a gun who has “improper motives.” He added that they could not bring a gun into restaurants that serve alcohol.

Stafstrom said that another unsuccessful Republican amendment would have made it possible for a person in a bathing suit to strap a gun around their waist and walk along the crowded beach on the July 4 holiday at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison.

Concerning the provision to limit the sale of handguns to one per month, Stafstrom said it is designed “to cut down on straw purchasing” that often involves re-selling guns to criminals and those without permits.

He added that a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases would be beneficial because “waiting periods are shown to reduce the suicide risk.”

But Rep. Greg Howard, a Republican who has served as a Stonington police officer for the past 21 years, said that the bill would not prevent mass shootings because no law passed by the legislature “is ever going to legislate evil out of the hearts of people.”

The core of Lamont’s gun safety coalition is the solid Democratic majorities in both the state House of Representatives and Senate, which each grew by one member this year as Democrats turned back an expected Republican red wave that never materialized in Connecticut. Democrats currently control the Senate by a veto-proof margin of 24-12 and control the House by 98-53.

In addition, Lamont has been joined in the coalition by mayors of the state’s largest cities — Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Waterbury — along with city police chiefs and the state’s top prosecutor, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick J. Griffin. Legislators have also been lobbied by advocacy groups, including Connecticut Against Gun Violence.

The legislation requires further approval by the full House and Senate, where some Republicans said they will make far more detailed comments than they did Tuesday at the committee level.

Anti-discrimination laws

In other matters, the Democratic-controlled committee voted in favor of revising the state’s anti-discrimination statutes regarding the legal definition of sexual orientation.

But Sen. John Kissel, an Enfield Republican who has served in the legislature for the past 31 years, and others raised concerns about the measure.

The bill says that sexual orientation “means a person’s identity in relation to the gender or genders to which they are romantically, emotionally or sexually attracted, inclusive of any identity that a person may have previously expressed or be perceived to hold.”

After hearing the definition read aloud by Sen. Gary Winfield at the meeting, Kissel said it was still not clear to him.

“It doesn’t help me to understand exactly what that entails,” Kissel said. “That definition seemed to be amorphous. … I think this is a bridge too far.”

Fishbein, the committee’s ranking House Republican, said that gender identity is already covered by state law, adding that he believes legislators need to work further on the language.

“Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same thing — just for clarification,” Winfield responded. “It’s adding to the statute to update the current definition of sexual orientation.”

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com