The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
After Bethel murder-suicide, domestic violence advocates decry federal ruling
HARTFORD — Merry Jackson was shot four times as she tried to save her daughter, who was fatally shot at her mother’s Oxford home in 2014 by her estranged husband who was prohibited from coming near her.
“I was afraid he’d take her and I’d never see her again,” Lori Jackson’s mother said. “I was shot four times. I think Lori fell on top of me. He just kept shooting.”
In the two years following Lori Jackson’s death, her family worked tirelessly with legislators to close a loophole in state law that allowed people who were the subject of temporary restraining orders to keep their firearms.
The family was among dozens of advocates for domestic violence victims and gun control along with state officials at Attorney General William Tong’s office Monday to decry a recent United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that allows individuals who are the subject of a restraining order to keep their weapons.
The ruling came two days after police say Traci-Marie Jones was killed in her Bethel home by her estranged husband, Lester, who was the subject of a restraining order prohibiting him from contacting her. It remains unclear whether Lester Jones, who died by suicide, turned over guns his estranged wife said were in his possession when she obtained a temporary restraining order on Jan. 17.
“This is an attack on women,” Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said of the Fifth Circuit ruling.
CCADV is the umbrella organization for Connecticut’s 18 service providers and shelters for victims of domestic violence. From 2000 to 2021, there were 309 intimate partner homicides, Scanlon said. Of those homicides, 266 were female victims and 40 percent of them were committed with a gun, she said.
In part thanks to the Jackson family, Connecticut law since 2016 has required anyone who is the subject of temporary or full restraining orders to turn over their guns to local or state police within 24 hours.
The federal Fifth Circuit Court ruling, which relied heavily on a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a New York law requiring a license to carry concealed weapons,
concluded that the founding fathers would not have protected victims by removing an aggressor’s right to a gun, Tong said.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling has sparked several lawsuits challenging Connecticut gun laws, including one seeking to end the state’s ban on assault weapons.
Tong said he would vigorously defend any challenge to the state’s law requiring people who are the subject of a restraining order to turn over their guns.
“We are going to fight tooth and nail to fight any challenge to protections for victims of domestic violence,” he said.
Merry Jackson, who U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., noted was already advocating for change while recovering from her gunshot wounds, pointed out that her son-in-law broke through two doors to get to her daughter that morning.
Although Lori Jackson and her mother obtained temporary restraining orders prohibiting Scott Gellatly from coming near them, he was allowed to possess firearms due to the loophole in state law.
Lori Jackson was staying at her parents home with her two children, 18month-old twins, who are now being raised by the Jackson family, for safety when she was killed there.
“We need to get the guns out of the home and make it a little harder until people can cool down,” Merry Jackson said Monday. “When I see another family in the news gong through this, it brings it all back.”