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 Legislature
Passes SB358
The CT General Assembly passed a new gun safety
bill in this session intended to prevent the kind of tragedy
whereby an 8-year-old boy from Ashford CT died after accidentally
shooting himself while firing an Uzi submachine gun under
adult supervision at a Massachusetts gun fair.
The bill, SB 358, An Act Prohibiting
the Transfer of Machine Gun to Minors, prohibits
any transfer of a machine gun to children under 16 years
of age, even temporarily, such as under supervision at a
firing range. Violation caries a $1,000 fine, imprisonment
for up to 10 years, or both. The House vote was unanimous.
The bill becomes law on October 1, 2009.
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Holocaust
Museum Shooting:James W. Van Brunn, who gunned down
security officer Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, DC, is a hard right extremist and
a loner who is not alone.
Like many other extremists, Van Brunn
believed that Western civilization was going to be replaced
with a "One World Illuminati Government" that would "confiscate
private weapons" in order to prevent any citizen uprising.
Von Brunn is not alone in his anti-government
views. He joins a list of insurrectionists, including: Richard
Poplawski, who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh
in April; Joshua Cartwright, who killed two police officers
in the Florida panhandle in April; and Jim Adkisson, who
killed two parishioners at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian
Universalist Church in July 2008. All shared Von Brunn's
paranoia. A friend of Poplawski told the Associated Press
that Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way."
According to the police report, Cartwright's wife said her
husband "believed that the US Government was conspiring
against him. She said he had been severely disturbed that
Barack Obama had been elected President." Adkisson told
police that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal
movement that he would then target those that had voted
them in to office."
Authorities say it is difficult to draw
the line to differentiate between those who just spew out
crazy ideas from those who are going to act on them. The
First Amendment protects their right of free speech and
the Second, according to last year's Supreme Court ruling
in Heller vs District of Columbia, their right to carry
a gun.
But the Heller decision doesn't prevent
us from passing common sense gun safety legislation to protect
the innocent. The NRA and the gun lobby works to prevent
that. Of all the possible gun safety legislation that Congress
could address - Closing the Gun Show Loophole, renewing
and improving the Assault Weapon Ban - the only gun legislation
passed by Congress this year was the NRA-inspired Coburn
Amendment , illogically attached to the Credit Card regulation
bill, allowing loaded guns to be carried in our National
Parks.
How does that help? More guns in more
places means more gun deaths.
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- Click
here to learn about the Red Flag campaign, sponsored
by the CAGV Education Fund.
- Click here
to view Gun Facts.
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