Not enough to just add a post to put it in New Post list, mods please understand my intentions for CT residents to see what we have allowed to happen with our new AG[sad2]
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Remembering a Sad Day in CT
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/28/ny...ut-senate.html
HARTFORD, May 27— The Connecticut Senate tonight broke through a decades-old roadblock to gun control legislation with a vote to ban the sale of at least 30 different models of semiautomatic military-style assault rifles.
The 18-to-18 tie, broken by the Lieutenant Governor, Eunice S. Groark, was considered a major victory by gun control forces. Lawmakers said it was the first time that the generally conservative Senate had acted to prohibit the sale of a whole class of weapons. The bill now goes to the House for action.
"There comes a point when you have to say, 'Enough is enough,' " said Senator George C. Jepsen, Democrat of Stamford and sponsor of the gun bill. "We're tired of the gun violence."
But much remains uncertain about one element of the bill that some supporters say could still provide the seeds of its undoing: an exemption for the Sporter rifle, a semiautomatic version of the AR-15 assault rifle, both produced by the Hartford-based Colt's Manufacturing Company. The company employs 1,000 people in and around the troubled city, and nearly 45 percent of its stock is owned by the state employee pension fund.
A preliminary version of the bill passed by the Senate about 8:30 P.M., after three hours of debate, included a ban on the Sporter. But less than two hours later, as a small army of Colt employees in blue and yellow Colt caps watched from the Senate gallery, the Senate majority leader, William A. DiBella, Democrat from Hartford, led a successful charge to remove the reference to the Sporter.
Mr. Dibella said the gun, despite the classification of the Federal Government to the contrary, is not an assault rifle at all. "You have an arbitrary list of guns that someone has assessed as assault weapons," he said. "The Colt Sporter does not belong."
Mr. Jepsen vehemently attacked his party's leader's arguments, which he said were intended for the "sole exclusive purpose of protecting local industry." He told reporters that the bill's supporters in the House would restore the Sporter to the list of banned guns. If the votes in the House are insufficient to return the gun to the banned list, Mr. Jepsen said, the bill might be killed to avoid passing legislation that he said appeared to favor a local gun at the expense of out-of-state weapons.
Another possibility, he said, would be to pass the bill with the Sporter exempted, and then challenge its legality in court. Certain Guns Forbidden
The bill, patterned after laws in New Jersey and California, forbids the sale of certain guns after Jan. 1, 1994, except to a licensed dealer. The list includes rapid-fire guns with large magazines like the MAC-10 semiautomatic pistol, the Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle and the Uzi machine pistol, which the police in cities like Bridgeport say are turning up more frequently in the hands of drug gangs.
Residents who possess such weapons prior to July 1 could keep them, but would be required to register with the state police. The bill also sets a five-year prison term, in addition to any other sentence, for a person who commits a major felony with a banned gun. Bipartisan Coalition
In debating those provisions, like those about Colt, Republicans were in some cases as bitterly divided as Democrats. One Republican who supported the ban, Senator William A. Aniskovich of Branford, said he embraced the proposal after opening his mind and rejecting what he termed the unthinking assumptions of the past.
"I don't think I've every been called unthinking," snapped the Republican leader, Senator M. Adela Eads, in rising to oppose it.
From the day last month when the gun bill survived a pivotal vote in the Judiciary Committee, its fate has been tied to a fragile bipartisan coalition of urban Democrats and suburban Republicans in the Senate.
The first question was whether the coalition would hold up under a barrage of constituent calls, organized by the National Rifle Association and local gun-owner groups, that began immediately after the committee vote. Several senators said this week that they had received 800 or more calls on the bill in the last 10 days. Twenty to thirty messages on a senator's home answering machine every night became the norm.
But in the last days before the vote, the larger arguments of the N.R.A. -- that the bill was a meaningless gesture that would not affect urban crime and would only penalize honest gun owners -- appeared to recede before the concerns of local politics, and once again the coalition was under siege.
"This place is incredibly sensitive to the 'jobs' buzzword, and for good reason," said Mr. Aniskovich, who voted for the gun ban. "But it's having a peculiar effect on this bill."
Photo: Colt's Manufacturing Company workers turned out at the Capitol in Hartford against a bill that would restrict the sale of assault weapons. (Steve Miller for The New York Times) (pg. B6)
Correction: May 29, 1993, Saturday Because of an editing error, an article in some editions yesterday about a Connecticut bill to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons referred incorrectly to the firearms affected. Submachines and other fully automatic weapons would not be covered; they are already effectively banned by Federal law.
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Added 11/05/10 By Tank
Thanks fellow voters and especially those who thought about voting, but stayed home.
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Remembering a Sad Day in CT
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/28/ny...ut-senate.html
HARTFORD, May 27— The Connecticut Senate tonight broke through a decades-old roadblock to gun control legislation with a vote to ban the sale of at least 30 different models of semiautomatic military-style assault rifles.
The 18-to-18 tie, broken by the Lieutenant Governor, Eunice S. Groark, was considered a major victory by gun control forces. Lawmakers said it was the first time that the generally conservative Senate had acted to prohibit the sale of a whole class of weapons. The bill now goes to the House for action.
"There comes a point when you have to say, 'Enough is enough,' " said Senator George C. Jepsen, Democrat of Stamford and sponsor of the gun bill. "We're tired of the gun violence."
But much remains uncertain about one element of the bill that some supporters say could still provide the seeds of its undoing: an exemption for the Sporter rifle, a semiautomatic version of the AR-15 assault rifle, both produced by the Hartford-based Colt's Manufacturing Company. The company employs 1,000 people in and around the troubled city, and nearly 45 percent of its stock is owned by the state employee pension fund.
A preliminary version of the bill passed by the Senate about 8:30 P.M., after three hours of debate, included a ban on the Sporter. But less than two hours later, as a small army of Colt employees in blue and yellow Colt caps watched from the Senate gallery, the Senate majority leader, William A. DiBella, Democrat from Hartford, led a successful charge to remove the reference to the Sporter.
Mr. Dibella said the gun, despite the classification of the Federal Government to the contrary, is not an assault rifle at all. "You have an arbitrary list of guns that someone has assessed as assault weapons," he said. "The Colt Sporter does not belong."
Mr. Jepsen vehemently attacked his party's leader's arguments, which he said were intended for the "sole exclusive purpose of protecting local industry." He told reporters that the bill's supporters in the House would restore the Sporter to the list of banned guns. If the votes in the House are insufficient to return the gun to the banned list, Mr. Jepsen said, the bill might be killed to avoid passing legislation that he said appeared to favor a local gun at the expense of out-of-state weapons.
Another possibility, he said, would be to pass the bill with the Sporter exempted, and then challenge its legality in court. Certain Guns Forbidden
The bill, patterned after laws in New Jersey and California, forbids the sale of certain guns after Jan. 1, 1994, except to a licensed dealer. The list includes rapid-fire guns with large magazines like the MAC-10 semiautomatic pistol, the Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle and the Uzi machine pistol, which the police in cities like Bridgeport say are turning up more frequently in the hands of drug gangs.
Residents who possess such weapons prior to July 1 could keep them, but would be required to register with the state police. The bill also sets a five-year prison term, in addition to any other sentence, for a person who commits a major felony with a banned gun. Bipartisan Coalition
In debating those provisions, like those about Colt, Republicans were in some cases as bitterly divided as Democrats. One Republican who supported the ban, Senator William A. Aniskovich of Branford, said he embraced the proposal after opening his mind and rejecting what he termed the unthinking assumptions of the past.
"I don't think I've every been called unthinking," snapped the Republican leader, Senator M. Adela Eads, in rising to oppose it.
From the day last month when the gun bill survived a pivotal vote in the Judiciary Committee, its fate has been tied to a fragile bipartisan coalition of urban Democrats and suburban Republicans in the Senate.
The first question was whether the coalition would hold up under a barrage of constituent calls, organized by the National Rifle Association and local gun-owner groups, that began immediately after the committee vote. Several senators said this week that they had received 800 or more calls on the bill in the last 10 days. Twenty to thirty messages on a senator's home answering machine every night became the norm.
But in the last days before the vote, the larger arguments of the N.R.A. -- that the bill was a meaningless gesture that would not affect urban crime and would only penalize honest gun owners -- appeared to recede before the concerns of local politics, and once again the coalition was under siege.
"This place is incredibly sensitive to the 'jobs' buzzword, and for good reason," said Mr. Aniskovich, who voted for the gun ban. "But it's having a peculiar effect on this bill."
Photo: Colt's Manufacturing Company workers turned out at the Capitol in Hartford against a bill that would restrict the sale of assault weapons. (Steve Miller for The New York Times) (pg. B6)
Correction: May 29, 1993, Saturday Because of an editing error, an article in some editions yesterday about a Connecticut bill to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons referred incorrectly to the firearms affected. Submachines and other fully automatic weapons would not be covered; they are already effectively banned by Federal law.
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Added 11/05/10 By Tank
Thanks fellow voters and especially those who thought about voting, but stayed home.
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