Bills banning bump stocks advancing
After intense debate, Connecticut lawmakers on both sides of the aisle voted Tuesday to push forward legislation that would ban bump stocks and untraceable firearms called “ghost guns.”
Members of the Judiciary Committee supported the measures after discussion that ranged from dissecting the language of the bills to amendments that would change the character of the bump stock bill entirely.
Bump stocks allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate similar to that of machine guns and were used by the Las Vegas shooter who killed 58 people and injured hundreds more last October. The bill also would ban trigger cranks and other rate-of-fire enhancements.
Ghost guns are weapons assembled from kits and parts ordered online that do not have serial numbers.
The votes, which move the measures to the legislature’s floor, come as several states already have enacted or are considering their own bump stock bans. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy repeatedly has expressed strong support for the bump stock bill.
Malloy immediately issued a statement in support of the vote.
“Make no mistake, this is a step in the right direction,” Malloy said. “As we have heard — loud and clear — from students and activists in recent weeks, Connecticut cannot afford to sit back while Congress continues to capitulate to the demands of the NRA while ignoring the demands of the vast majority of the American people. The legislation passed today is the definition of common sense. These cheap and deadly devices — which allow weapons to fire at machine gun-like speeds — have no place in our society. It is truly unfortunate that some Republicans are so beholden to the NRA that they won’t even support this no-brainer bill.”
Rep. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, opposed the bump stock legislation, saying it was “capitalizing on a recent very emotional situation” resulting from the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., and that it was based on politics, not good policy.
“I don’t see a purpose for bump stocks, but I also don’t see that we have the right to arbitrarily tell citizens of our state what they can or cannot own,” Sampson said.
Sampson proposed three amendments to reframe the bill in ways he said would fight gun violence. One amendment would have recast the measure to do away with public financing for political campaigns and redirect the money to pay for public school resource officers and beds for people involuntarily committed to hospitals because of mental health problems.
All the amendments were narrowly defeated.
Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, backed the ban and said her support wasn’t based on an emotional response in the least.
“Why do we need these guns to start with?” Porter said. “And why on earth would we have to put in the hands of people something that would help them to expedite their efforts to have a mass shooting and a mass killing?”
Other lawmakers said the bill’s language was too vague and not clear in its intent, and questioned the need for it since Connecticut already bans possession of fully automatic weapons.
Clarice Silber is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (www. ctmirror.org). Copyright 2018 © The Connecticut Mirror. csilber@ctmirror.org