While much of the country has looked to Connecticut as a beacon of progressive legislation, people actually living there aren’t as united on the state’s new gun laws as the media may make it seem. That is, if Governor Dannel Malloy’s (not a typo) town hall in Milford earlier this week indicates anything. The New Haven Register reports:
In the first tense exchange of the evening, Matthew Dallachie, a Marines Corps veteran, took issue with the gun control legislation passed by the legislature and signed by Malloy last year.
“Do you really think you’re keeping me safer?” Dallachie asked. “You entrusted me, as a veteran of the United States Marines, to do what I had to do with a weapon, and yet I come back and you don’t trust me with that same weapon?”
That question and others posed by Dallachie led Malloy to defend the legislation, noting that it was crafted by the legislature but signed by him. … Dallachie also wanted to know what Malloy was doing to stop criminals from obtaining guns, rather than restricting access to guns by law abiding citizens.
“When you’re trying to combat crime, is to lower everyone’s crime and the reality is that we’re having some great success in doing just that in the State of Connecticut, by having good laws and having good departments,” Malloy said.
The governor also said “it would all be a lot easier if the federal government would pass a universal background check,” which elicited loud grumbling from the crowd.
Of course it’s easy enough to say that only disgruntled citizens show up to these events. But from my own experiences attending open forums like these in the Nutmeg State, many people come in order to voice their support for proposed & existing legislation as well.
What this exchange really shows is the utter lunacy of the legislation as written: a Marine veteran, who is more than adequately trained in using firearms, is barred from possessing the same weapons he used to defend our nation overseas — for purely cosmetic reasons.
Stag Arms of New Britain, CT has already made a “Connecticut legal” version of the maligned AR-15 rifle, which only needed a few tweaks to comply with the state’s laws. The same thing is happening in New York too (where the NY SAFE Act neglected to include a high-capacity magazine exemption for police officers).
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men”
But not for very long.