Guns are not the big issue in Connecticut

Connecticut already has the toughest gun laws in the country, even as its state government is the country’s second most insolvent.

From the silly posturing in Connecticut’s campaign for governor, people might think that the state’s biggest issue is guns.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, a Democratic candidate, wants state law to disqualify the National Rifle Association as a safety instructor for people seeking gun permits, not because the NRA’s instruction is deficient, but because the mayor abhors the NRA’s political views.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates for governor are professing devotion to gun owners, who are believed likely to decide the Republican primary.

But Connecticut already has the toughest gun laws in the country, even as its state government is the country’s second most insolvent. That latter reality should be the most compelling issue in the campaign for governor.

Unfortunately the Democratic candidates have nothing relevant to say about the state’s financial problem. They are striving only to avoid any suggestion that solving the problem might require state and municipal employees to sacrifice, since their unions dominate the party and likely will decide its primary.

Despite Connecticut’s tough gun laws, the other day four people were shot in separate incidents in Bridgeport, the city with the biggest delegation to the Democratic State Convention. This escaped notice by the Democratic candidates. The worsening social disintegration over which the party long has presided can’t be discussed either.

Last week Gov. Dannel P. Malloy renewed his clamor against “assault weapons,” urging a national gun retailer, Bass Pro Shops, to stop selling them. The retailer’s new store in Bridgeport was heavily subsidized by the governor’s administration and he would be right to feel guilty about it.

But no one can provide a good definition of “assault weapons.” Asked the other day how the governor defined them, a spokesman cited the Connecticut law that purports to outlaw them. But the law mainly specifies certain makes and models of guns without explanation for their illegality, even as the only important characteristic of guns is how they reload and fire, not their manufacturer, model name or number, and attachments, no matter how scary they look.

The Connecticut law is essentially a bill of attainder, a proscription of a particular model of a thing, rather than a proscription describing the thing itself. Bills of attainder are remnants of tyranny, declarations that someone is to be considered a criminal just because of his name, and the federal Constitution forbids them. Under the Constitution, people can be penalized only for what they do.

Remove the manufacturer and model names from the Connecticut law and as a practical matter an “assault weapon” becomes any weapon that reloads automatically, whether it fires bursts with a single pull of the trigger — a fully automatic firearm, which is nearly prohibited in the United States — or fires only single shots with a single pull of the trigger — a semi-automatic firearm.

Indeed, most guns in civilian possession in the United States are self-reloading and thus semi-automatic, and most guns made since the Colt Navy revolver was invented in 1851 are self-reloading and thus essentially semi-automatic, making them “assault weapons.”

Thus banning semi-automatic weapons really means banning most guns owned by civilians in the United States.

Of course an argument can be made for that but people making that argument should define their terms better and be honest about their objective.