Guest Column: New Gun Law A ‘Politically Motivated Overreaction’

Calvin Coolidge once said that it is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

It’s with that mindset that the gun control bill that passed in our state should have been shot down.

In his editorial on the matter criticizing the no” votes, David Helm notes himself that the gun control bill is not perfect”. I’ll go one farther: it is a politically motivated overreaction that even Vice President Joe Biden admitted on the federal level would not have stopped what happened at Newtown.

The new gun laws will add even further financial burdens in a state that is already one of the most heavily taxed in America, institute a gun registry and assault weapons ban that will do nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, punishes lawful gun owners who are vastly in the majority, and is already having consequences on the economy with Bristol based PTR announcing that they would be leaving the state; others are looking to move as well.

In Senator Rob Kane’s piece explaining why he didn’t vote for the gun control bill, he specifically noted that he did not want to give his constituents a false sense of security”.

The current gun control measures do just that; they do nothing to curtail gun crime, as the robbery of Webster Bank in Seymour proved. 

This author will be the first person to admit that the National Rifle Association is not a friend of the general public. However, their lobbying of these issues should be separated from the real impact these laws will have on the state of Connecticut. The pros are non existent, while the negatives are legion. The accusation that Mr. Helm levies, that people who voted no on this are simply in the NRAs thrall, is intellectually dishonest and seems to chill legitimate opposition to the bill.

There are many societal changes that we should pursue to address our culture of violence in America. Our recently passed gun laws seek — and fail — to address a symptom instead of the disease. Until we start to perform triage on the disease, we should not pass short-sighted legislation that will do little to actually help Connecticut residents. 

The writer is a Derby resident.

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