“Last month, Connecticut lawmakers passed a bill requiring alleged domestic abusers to turn in their guns 24 hours after being served with a temporary restraining order,” Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitpropmesiters report at thetrace,org. “Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy signed the bill on Tuesday, and when it takes effect on October 1, Connecticut will be the 16th state to remove guns from alleged abusers prior to a full hearing for a final order of protection.” The 16th state to deny gun owners their Constitutional rights to due process. This they did aided and abetted by Republican minority leader Themis Klarides (above). Here’s how she justified the “compromise” that ensured the bill’s passage . . .
Under the current system, a full court hearing on converting a temporary restraining order to a permanent order is held within 14 days of the TRO being issued. The compromise Connecticut lawmakers struck was an amendment that shortens that period to seven days when the person seeking the order checks a box on the application indicating that the accused abuser is a gun owner. Klarides says she would have preferred a hearing within 24 to 48 hours, but Connecticut doesn’t have night and weekend courts, making such expedited hearings impossible.
Even more important than due process concerns, Klarides says, was the fact that the state had no protocols for returning guns after a restraining order ultimately expires. Before the bill’s passage, the subjects of expired orders called the state police and made an appointment to get their guns back, a process that had no formalized deadline. Under the new law, subjects of expired orders will get their guns back within five days. To gun owners, “that was the biggest deal with this legislation,” Klarides said.
Was it? Was it really? If so, shame on them. The biggest deal is that this bill empowers the Constitution State to confiscate residents’ firearms on the say-so of a judge, without being able to defend themselves and/or confront their accusers in a court of law. A fact that Klarides swept to one side as she frog-marched fellow CT Republicans to support the bill.
By the time the bill was up for a vote this year, it was Klarides who persuaded her fellow Republican lawmakers not to stall the bill again.
“I wouldn’t have voted for it last year, I’ll tell you that,” she tells The Trace. Though the bill is “nowhere near perfect,” it “balanced the needs of domestic violence victims, which are certainly very important, and the rights of firearm owners.”
“We see this domestic violence tragedy occur on a daily basis,” she says. “And if it will save lives, I think we have to be willing to give it a shot.”
So the Minority Leader understands that the bill sacrifices liberty for the mere possibility of safety. Until and unless Connecticut voters express their displeasure with RINOs at the ballot box, their elected representatives will continue their erosion of citizens’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Let that be a lesson to us all.