Want a visit from the Leader of the Free World himself? Simple. You don’t even have to write a seven figure check. All you have to do is violate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners in your state. This week it was Colorado. Next week: Connecticut. The peripatetic CinC will peacock his way through the now-ironically named Constitution State on Monday to push his civilian disarmament efforts. Somehow the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation offices were left off of the Prez’s itinerary. Their take after the jump . . .
President Obama will be in Connecticut on Monday at an invitation-only event to celebrate passage by the state’s General Assembly this week of what is being called the toughest package of gun-control legislation in the country. His visit is a public relations tactic and comes as momentum for new federal laws seems to be grinding toward a halt on Capitol Hill.
While much is being said concerning the bipartisanship and reputed thoroughness of the information-finding process to inform the lawmaking, in fact the complicated legislative package was brought to the floor of both chambers having been negotiated behind closed doors, without a public hearing and with hardly any time for legislators to even read the 139 pages of language, as NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane pointed out in op-ed commentary in today’s Hartford Courant. Connecticut’s firearms and component manufacturers now face the decision of whether to move all or part of their operations to one of several more regulation-friendly states that are inviting them to set up shop.
As readers of this report know, in the aftermath of the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, NSSF and its member companies based in Connecticut and western Massachusetts were active both at the General Assembly and in the media arguing for practical measures to reduce violence and the criminal misuse of firearms and against ineffective solutions such as a ban on modern sporting rifles and arbitrary limits on magazine capacity.
In a statement released following the governor’s emotional bill-signing ceremony on Thursday, NSSF pointed out the first of what could be many problems with the now enacted law, namely that the procedure spelled out for conducting the so-called “universal background check” for private party firearms transfers contradicted provisions of federal law. Court action to overturn the law is virtually certain.
Pro-Second Amendment advocates, sportsmen and even employees of firearms manufacturers nearly always outnumbered gun-control enthusiasts in assembles at the state capitol complex in Hartford. The latest such gathering organized by NSSF, NRA, Connecticut concealed carry and sportsmen’s’ organizations brought in hundreds to stand witness to the final floor votes in both chambers of the General Assembly.