Lawsuit seeks to allow guns in state parks
A Cheshire financial adviser has filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to strike down a longtime ban that prohibits visitors to Connecticut’s state parks from carrying handguns for self-protection.
David Nastri is seeking a permanent declaratory ruling and a temporary injunction while the lawsuit is pending barring the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from enforcing the law on carrying handguns in state parks for self-defense.
Permitted gun owners can carry firearms into state parks for hunting small game during particular seasons and if they are attending a hunter education class, according to DEEP regulations. But visitors to the parks are not allowed to carry firearms for self-defense, said attorney Cameron Atkinson, who is representing Nastri.
Nastri contends in the lawsuit filed last week that the DEEP, which manages Connecticut’s parks. is violating a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. Bruen, which now requires governments to demonstrate that gun restrictions or regulations are consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition
of firearm regulation,” according to Atkinson, who has previously filed other legal challenges to the state’s gun laws.
The Supreme Court ruling, which was issued in 2022, has sparked a handful of lawsuits in Connecticut, including a challenge to the state’s ban on assault weapons. State Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, who is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in that lawsuit, is also proposing a law that would require DEEP to allow handguns in state parks.
“We have not reviewed the complaint yet and cannot comment on specifics other than to confirm that the Office of the Attorney General will continue to defend our state’s commonsense gun safety measures and the state’s ability to protect its residents from gun violence,” said Attorney General William Tong, whose office will defend the state in the lawsuits. “More guns in more public places is not the answer.”
Nastri, who Atkinson describes as an Afghanistan combat veteran and longtime financial planner who received his law degree in 2018 and donated a kidney to a local school teacher in 2001 to save her life, uses the state’s parks on an occasional basis, hiking Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden and Naugatuck State Park with his girlfriend.
If the couple needed help from first responders, it could take 30 minutes or more, Atkinson said in the lawsuit. The Bruen ruling and the Second Amendment “requires the court to put a stop to Connecticut depriving its citizens of he most popular means of selfdefense where it is undoubtedly the hardest for first responders to protect them,” the lawsuit stated.
Park visitors who violate the ban on carrying firearms unless under the circumstances outlined in DEEP policy face a $35 fine and ejection from the park for 24 hours. Nastri wants a judge to issue a temporary injunction prohibiting the DEEP from enforcing the ban with fines and other sanctions while the lawsuit is pending.