Connecticut's Push For Gun Control

[shadowrider]

Those horrible killings down in Arizona don’t look like they’re going to ignite any new gun-control firestorms in Congress this year, but Connecticut’s General Assembly is heading toward another heated debate over the best way to control gun violence here.

The new targets in this state include a gun-offender registry, restrictions on who can buy ammunition, and limits on the number of bullets handgun magazines can hold. A spokesman for the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen says a fight over most of these proposals is certain.

The Connecticut push for additional controls is coming in response to surging homicide statistics in urban centers like New Haven and Bridgeport rather than as a reaction to the Arizona shootings that left six dead and 13 wounded, says state Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney.

http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/featured-news/connecticuts-push-for-gun-control-041020

The Connecticut push for additional controls is coming in response to surging homicide statistics in urban centers like New Haven and Bridgeport

Crime ridden cities where the perps don't pay attention to the law. These proposals would only harm law-abiding gun owners.

[CTyankee]

1. Lotsa people don't know that New Haven and Hartford were important in the history

of the American gun. "The Gun that Won the West", Winchester's, were made in New Haven and the old factory buildings still exist today...my volunteer office of Literacy Volunteers is there...plus some research companies...it is now called "Science Park."

Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson were Nutmeggers and the Colt factory still operates (in some fashion) in Hartford.

[RSillsbee]

2. What is a "nutmegger"?

Sounds like it would be a good thing to call a pug

[petronius]

3. CT is the Nutmeg State:

The "Nutmeg State"

According to the book State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols by George Earlie Shankle (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1941):

"The sobriquet, the Nutmeg State, is applied to Connecticut because its early inhabitants had the reputation of being so ingenious and shrewd that they were able to make and sell wooden nutmegs. Sam Slick (Judge Halliburton) seems to be the originator of this story. Some claim that wooden nutmegs were actually sold, but they do not give either the time or the place."

Yankee peddlers from Connecticut sold nutmegs, and an alternative story is that:

"Unknowing buyers may have failed to grate nutmegs, thinking they had to be cracked like a walnut. Nutmegs are wood, and bounce when struck. If southern customers did not grate them, they may very well have accused the Yankees of selling useless "wooden" nutmegs, unaware that they wear down to a pungent powder to season pies and breads." Elizabeth Abbe, Librarian, the Connecticut Historical Society; Connecticut Magazine, April 1980.

http://www.cslib.org/nicknamesCT.htm

[CTyankee]

4. I didn't know that! But I certainly love it!

CT was quite a manufacturing state in the 19th century. It profited from having a great influx of freed black citizens from the South looking for work and a freer life than they had in the repressive Southern states after Reconstruction. Of course, Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Hartford and she blazed a trail for the anti slavery movement in the mid 19th century in this country. CT has a proud progressive history.

[oneshooter]

5. Both Sam Colt and Smith and Wesson made HANDGUNS

just like those you want to ban.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[CTyankee]

6. Oh, now Armed, you know I never said the word "banned."

However, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson lived in a different time from you and me. There was a wilderness to conquer, a "manifest destiny" to fulfill if you will remember your history lesson. That was then, this is now.

However, my point is more about Ct's history as a manufacturing state (gun manufacture had its day, now largely past). Yankee shipbuilders in such places as Stonington, CT built clipper ships to challenge the mighty British navy (the greatest naval power in the world at the time)! Hooray for their ingenuity and their dedication and enthusiasm. That is a time PAST. We can and we must produce more and better. And Connecticut as a PROGRESSIVE state can do this and we will!

time to look forward. yes!

[petronius]

8. Very true. Growing up in the West, I had only a book knowledge of how the

Industrial Revolution progressed in the US - basically, I knew that the Midwest made cars and then we made airplanes. It was quite interesting, when I started visiting New England, to see all the evidence of an earlier manufacturing era to go along with the trading and whaling history that I more associated with the region...

Haven't made it to CT yet, but I've got the state surrounded - only a matter of time. :)

[CTyankee]

10. For a nice whaling town with a great seafood joint, go to Noank, CT, near Groton.

Lovely little spot with great houses that have widows walks...the restaurant is called Abbott's. In the summer you dine outside on picnic tables right on the water, but you have to be careful or a seagull will literally dive down and steal your lobster!

[badtoworse]

13. Excellent recommendation!

Abbott's specializes in lobster and is BYO beer or wine (so hit a local liquor store before you go). You might also consider spending the day at Mystic Seaport before ending it at Abbott's. The submarine museum in Groton is also worthwhile to visit.

My friend and I usually eat there the night before our annual tuna charter on the Mataura

[benEzra]

7. Ruger, Colt, Mossberg, and Marlin are all still in Connecticut, from what I see...

Connecticut is still one of the leading gun manufacturing states in the nation. Ruger is one of the biggest gun manufacturers in the world, and Mossberg is not exactly a minor player.

FWIW, all four companies manufacture "assault weapons" as defined by various jurisdictions, including the AR-15, SR-556, Mini-14, 10/22, various semiautomatic pistols, various semiautomatic shotguns, and whatnot.

http://www.ruger.com/products/sr556/index.html
http://www.coltsmfg.com/Catalog/tabid/61/CatID/21/Default.aspx
http://www.mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=1§ion=products
http://www.marlinfirearms.com/firearms/default.asp

You also have a whole lot of U.S. Navy sites there, as well as some very famous shipbuilders (e.g., Electric Boat, which has made (and still makes) a lot of the U.S. Navy's nuclear subs). I worked with an electrical engineer from Groton for a while who had worked for EB, and he was very impressed with it.

I like your state (though not all of your laws) and have passed through CT a few times on the way to Boston Children's, and to/from relatives in Massachusetts and Maine.

[one-eyed fat man]

12. A couple more old Colt employees

The Pratt & Whitney Company was founded in 1860 by Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, with headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut. The company manufactured machine tools, tools for the makers of sewing machines, and gun-making machinery for use by the Union Army during the American Civil War. By 1925 the desire of a couple of gunsmiths for higher quality machine work resulted in the R-1340 "Wasp" radial aircraft engine. Pratt & Whitney now being one of the premier aircraft engine builders in the world.

Amos Whitney was the nephew of Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame. Francis Pratt was responsible for introducing decimal inches in to standard machine shop practice.

Colt Firearms became a large multifaceted company owning diversified subsidiaries as Crucible Steel, Holley Carburetor, aerospace companies like Fairchild, Menasco among others. After passage of the assault weapons ban, under political pressure from the Clinton Administration, and a disastrous four year strike by the UAW, Colt Industries divested itself of its parent division.

The original Colt factory is presently occupied by US Firearms. The gilded wooden "Rampant Colt" that used to adorn the "Blue Dome" was taken by the State and is displayed at the Connecticut State Library.

Colt was a potent force for the First Amendment as well. In addition to Colt firearms, the factory produced a number of items under contract for other companies. The most famous of these was a letterpress printing press designed by Merrit Gally, known as the Universal. From 1873 to 1902, the Armory manufactured a series of these presses that developed a reputation as the finest hand-fed platen press ever made (a reputation which survives to the present). These presses eventually became known generically as "Colt's Armory" presses.

[CTyankee]

14. There is an Eli Whitney museum in New Haven as well. Haven't visited it in years, tho.

New Haven has a rich history. Every time I walk on the Green I think of the presence of all those Puritans' bones lying beneath it. I sometimes give my own little " A Liberals Tour of New Haven," taking folks to the Amistad replica when it is in harbor and the building where Estelle Griswald, then the Executive Director of CT's Planned Parenthood League, defied the state law and started providing women with birth control...and was promptly arrested...resulting eventually in the landmark Supreme Court's Griswald v. Connecticut...

[krispos42]

9. It was a bad summer in Bridgeport

Seemed like every week there's be a couple of dead bodies found on the streets in the way-too-early hours of the morning.

[CTyankee]

11. Very bad in New Haven as well. Sad...

[friendly_iconoclast]

15. Let us know when you get your urban murder rates down to equal those in Arizona

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_06.html

The first number is population, the second the number of murders:

124,049 33 Hartford 1 murder per 3,759.0 residents
123,659 12 New Haven " " " 10,304.9 "
136,049 12 Bridgeport " " " 11,337.4 "

1,597,397 122 Phoenix " " " 13,093.4 "
547,981 35 Tucson " " " 15,656.6 "

[lawodevolution]

16. No need to ban ammo from people who can't buy a gun. Also magazine capacity limits are designed

To prepare society for the next step which is to futher lower magazine capacity limits and finally ban detachable magazines. A gun crime registry already exists, it's called a record or are they talking about a public registry like for pedophiles?

[YllwFvr]

17. Philadelphia is trying the same thing

They just dont seem to get that they arent allowed. Every year they try again. Makes me wonder what kind of people are getting elected down there.