Apr 3, 2013 3 min read

We have been a steady supporter of the need to improve the gun-control laws in our nation, but the wide-ranging measure that was up for approval yesterday in the Connectictut General Assembly was far too broad.

Certainly, one can understand that after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown last December by a deranged, heavily armed assassin, lawmakers in Connecticut are especially attuned to the issue of gun control and no doubt were attempting to do whatever they could to prevent a repeat of that tragedy.

But while some of the restrictions they intend to impose are legitimate responses, such as tightening the rules on background checks for gun buyers and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines, others are not.

For instance, the legislation would require current owners of high-capacity magazines – those that hold more than 10 bullets – to register them with the state. That’s an overreach, in our opinion. One might argue that states require us to register our vehicles, but that is for the purposes of charging a vehicle fee and also to protect, to some degree, future purchasers of used vehicles. Requiring owners to register existing high-capacity magazines would not prevent a single shooting incident. Those who would register are not the folks who generally would be expected to open fire inside a schoolhouse, and even if they did, what good would come of the fact that their ammo magazine was on file?

The Connecticut bill, cobbled together after weeks of bipartisan legislative negotiations, also expands the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons by adding more than 100 types of firearms to the list, which now would effectively prohibit any rifle with either a flash suppressor or a pistol grip. Absent any accompanying national law, and with so many of these banned weapons already in people’s possession, someone interested in finding an “assault weapon” in Connecticut – or across the border – will be able to do so. Again, the law would require those who already own such weapons to register them, and again, we think this is a useless overreach.

But it gets worse, if you’re a law-abiding Connecticut gun owner or would-be gun owner. The law would require a person to secure a state-issued “ammunition eligibility certificate” before buying any rifle, shotgun or ammunition. In order to get one of those certificates, a person would have to take a firearms training course and be fingerprinted. This is onerous, and it treats a law-abiding citizen who already owns guns like a common criminal.

An old Connecticut farmer who has been hunting for 50 years clearly does not need a gun-safety course. Nor does he need to be required to visit a police station or courthouse to be fingerprinted in order to buy shells for his 12-gauge.

That said, we continue to support reasonable action in Washington, D.C., to ban the sale of high-capacity magazines, for which there is no legitimate civilian need (30-round magazines helped the Newtown gunman fire more than 150 rounds in five minutes and kill 26 people), and we favor universal background checks for gun purchases, in particular the closing of the gun show loophole that has permitted convicted felons and others with bad intentions to buy guns with not even a cursory review.

Preventing all mass shootings in our schools and elsewhere would be impossible, but preventing just one would be enough. However, our elected officials need to make sure that the measures they approve actually would do some good, and that in the process they are not trampling the rights and the expectations of privacy of those who already legally own guns.