Panel OKs firearm seizure law expansion

Allows ‘red flags’ to be raised by family, medical professionals

HARTFORD — A key legislative committee has voted to expand a Connecticut law that allows guns to be temporarily seized from troubled firearms owners.

The law, which was originally enacted in 1999, has helped those whowere suicidal or in danger of hurting others, lawmakers said.

“The law has prevented hundreds of deaths in our state ... primarily suicides,” said Rep. Stephen Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s judiciary committee.

The law is being expanded to allow family members and medical professionals to raise a “red flag” that would provide evidence to a Superior Court judge to issue a risk protection order and seize firearms from gun owners believed to be a danger to themselves or others. The expansion would include concerns raised by household members and professionals such as doctors, psychologists, nurses, clinical social workers and physician assistants.

Currently, the Connecticut law states that a prosecutor or any two police officers can conduct an investigation and file a complaint to the court regarding their concerns in order to have the guns removed. Only a judge could order the actual seizure of the guns.

Those living with a person

“may have much better firsthand knowledge” than a police officer or prosecutor regarding a person’s state of mind, Stafstrom said.

The measure passed the committee, 27-11, mostly along party lines Tuesday with Democrats in favor and Republicans against. But several Republicans, such as Rep. Thomas O’Dea of New Canaan and Rep. Stephen Harding of Brookfield, voted with the Democrats in favor of the bill.

The bill still requires further approval by the state House of Representatives, Senate andGov. NedLamont.

In other matters, the judiciary committee voted unanimously Tuesday to allow an adult to own a Taser or stun gun if they are over the age of 21 and have a permit for a firearm or ammunition, which requires them to complete a criminal background check.

Proponents said that owning a Taser could be important in self-defense and would lead to a person being struck with an electrical shock, rather than being killed by a gun.

Rep. Craig Fishbein, a Wallingford Republican, asked for the bill to be placed on the consent calendar for items that are not controversial, and the entire discussion of the bill lasted about two minutes without any debate on the merits.

Lawmakers

also approved a bill that would ban so-called no-knock warrants in which officers burst into a home without announcing themselves. Fishbein agreed with the ban, saying he wanted to ensure “that the power of the badge is not overused in an improper fashion.”

Thebill wouldalso update a section of the police accountability law that passed last summer. The law had made it more difficult for officers to search a car for drugs or guns if a driver had beenpulled over for a routine traffic violation. The new bill says police officers can ask to search the car if they have “reasonable and articulable suspicion that weapons, contra band or other evidence of a crime is contained within the vehicle.”

But Sen. Gary Winfield, a New Haven Democrat, said he voted against the bill because the legislature was attempting to change the police accountability bill once again — less than a year after it was passed.

“I have a little bit of frustration here,” Winfield said. “I’m voting no to flag this bill. I’ve been in this legislature since 2009, and over and over and over, I have been told we did that last year. We can’t do it this year. ... Not even that it got passed, but that we attempted to do it the year before. At this moment, I don’t get it, and I need time to figure that out.”