Lawmakers debate gun violence

Firearms enthusiasts warned on Monday that proposals to create a Council on Gun Violence Prevention would threaten their constitutional rights.

The bill, which would also declare gun violence a public health crisis in the state, illustrated a rift between Republicans and Democrats on the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee as it faces its deadline later this week.

“Will this get to the root of gun violence and why is it a public health crisis?” State Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, asked Dr. Manisha Juthani, state commissioner of public health. “We know there is gun violence, especially in the cities.”

Juthani said that another provision would create an advisory council to outline problems and possible solutions within various communities. Zupkus, in her fifth two-year term, said that with a similar council already in existence, and asked why another should be formed.

“We’re looking at trying to find the best way forward to be able to address this issue,” Juthani said, stressing that a major key to combat violence is community engagement. Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget proposal includes $3.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to create a statewide anti-violence strategy.

“As long as I’ve been in the legislature and seen many gun bills and many proposals, it always affects the lawabiding citizens,” Zupkus said. “It never affects people that don’t have gun permits; that are shooting each other. It never addresses that. And that’s the problem. It’s not people that use this as a sport, have their permit, you know, law-abiding citizens. This is the crime that is happening and nothing has been able to fix that. They never affect the people that need to be affected by these gun laws.”

“I strongly disagree with you statements about ‘never,’” said state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, cochairman of the committee. “It’s a very strong word to use absolutes. These gun laws that we passed after Sandy Hook and before, have had a profound impact. The mere fact that criminals use guns is not an excuse for not taking action. I would also argue that there’s nothing more lethal than a gun. They were intended and created to kill people.”

“I think we can agree to disagree, representative,” Zupkus said.

“I oppose this bill because gun violence is not a public health crisis unless you presently live in Ukraine,” said David Ioime of Cheshire during the day-long public hearing on the issue, including Lamont’s proposals last month to tackle gun trafficking and violence in the state.

“We have laws on the books that need to be strengthened by the state General Assembly and continuous annual funding of programs like the state’s anti-gang task force, which has not been the case,” Ioime said during the virtual hearing. “Furthermore, these sorts of initiatives seem intent to statefund anti-gun organizations that have their own agenda and goals. Eventually, I expect these efforts will infringe on second amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who own firearms.”

Ioime, in a brief engagement with Steinberg, called for harsher criminal penalties for both juveniles and adults. Steinberg noted that gun-safety laws passed in recent years have been upheld by courts as constitutional.

State Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, speaking in favor of the legislation as well as a companion bill, said that whole communities in the state’s large cities are traumatized by the alltoo regular killings.

While appreciating and understanding the strides in gun safety made since the 2012 Newtown School massacre, Winfield, co-chairman of the legislative Judiciary Committee, said that “For a very long time we have not put our shoulder to the wheel on this issue. If we’re not dealing with this issue, if some of our children belong to a community where life is not preserved in this way, then we are not doing the public-health service.”

He recalled Sandy Hook.

“I don’t want to be here nine years later, saying the same things I said nine years ago about a slow, banal, masskilling of children in the state of Connecticut and the legislature talking about how we’ve done gun control,” Winfield said. “So what I implore you all to do is figure out how to bring all of this together for the children of our state.”

Jess Carruthers remembered sitting in a classroom at Masuk High School in Monroe the afternoon of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, thinking that the 26 dead first graders and adults became a stark repudiation of everything she, as a young teenager, had been taught about relative safety. She became disappointed at the response of adults in the months and years following, in which little was done, she said, to stop further bloodshed.

“In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I watched a political conversation unfold that could not agree on the causes of or the solutions to this violence,” said Carruthers, who eventually went on to a master’s degree in public health. “I watched officials meet people’s grief and rage with avoidance of head-on solutions and stagnation. Gun violence is not just school shootings. It’s also homicides, which disproportionately impact Black neighborhoods. It is a community diagnosis of anxiety, depression and trauma for the victims, for those close to them and for the witnesses.”

But Steinberg noted that the General Assembly did a variety of measures in the months immediately following the school shooting, including banning military-style rifles and large ammunition magazines; and requiring background checks even prior to purchases of bullets.

“I think this legislature stood up and did the right thing very quickly, passing some legislation that would address some of the issues that came out of that tragedy like Newtown-Sandy Hook and has since then, tried every year to move that ball forward,” Steinberg said.