City reps: Gun owners should show permits if requested by police

Resolution urges state to revise laws on issue

STAMFORD — City legislators have agreed to ask the state to change the law and require gun owners to show their carry permit when police ask for it.

“We’re just asking the state to have a discussion about it and nothing else,” said city Rep. Jeffrey Stella, D-9, who introduced resolution Jan. 25 along with city Reps. Rodney Pratt, D-9, and Jeff Curtis, D-14.

The resolution, which itself would not change any city statutes, calls on the state to revise laws to require gun owners to present their carry permit when asked by police.

Rep. J.R. McMullen, one of the nine representatives who voted against the resolution, said he couldn’t vote in favor of a resolution that asks the state legislature to consider making a law that he claims would be unconstitutional.

“I don’t know why we’re asking the state to do something that wastes their time, when there is so much other stuff that they failed to do over the last year and half that

“I’m still of the feeling that this is too fragile a situation, too likely to lead to profiling and possibly puts police officers and the public around them in danger.”

City Rep. Susan Nabel, one of nine to oppose the resolution

we should get them to focus on,” McMullen said.

McMullen was joined by Gloria DePina, Bradley Michelson, Susan Nabel, Selina Policar, Robert Roqueta, Bob Lion, Dennis Mahoney and Nina Sherwood in opposing the resolution.

Nabel said the reason she couldn’t support the resolution was she felt it could be used as a backdoor for police to racially profile city residents.

“I’m still of the feeling that this is too fragile a situation, too likely to lead to profiling and possibly puts police officers and the public around them in danger,” she said.

For Rep. Bobby Pavia, he said his own “unnerving” personal experiences with seeing opencarrying individuals around the city had influenced him to vote in favor of the resolution.

“I don’t think it’s an infringement on anybody’s constitutional rights to be asked when they are brandishing them (guns) to just show that they have a license to have them,” he said.

Curtis, another of the resolution’s co-sponsors, said there were six incidents in Stamford over the past couple of years where police were called to check on a person bearing a firearm. In all but one of the incidents, the gun owners were “more than happy” to show their permit, which he offered as proof that a change to state law, if enacted, wouldn’t be too intrusive.

“My situation here is that people that want to carry guns illegally know that the state law allows them to refuse to show their license, so what is to prevent someone who is carrying illegally, who knows the law, to just say ‘I’m sorry but my constitutional rights and state law says I don’t have to show you my gun permit,’ ” Curtis said.

If the state were to pass a law requiring gun owners to show their permit when asked by police, as is recommended by the resolution, that would “lend itself ” to getting illegal guns off the street, Curtis said.

Since being unveiled, the new resolution has received support from the city’s police department and Mayor David Martin, but has been met with debate on the Board of Representatives.

This isn’t the first time Stamford city representatives have asked the state to consider passing such a measure.

A similar proposal was shot down by the state legislature in 2017, when then-state Rep. William Tong, now state attorney general, and his colleagues state Reps. Caroline Simmons and Daniel Fox, both D-Stamford, brought it forward.

After the local resolution was passed, Stella told Hearst Connecticut Media that he hoped the state would seriously consider moving forward with changing the law.

“To me, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.