Sen. Guglielmo statement on SB 1106

April 4, 2013

Hartford – CT, Senator Tony Guglielmo (R-Stafford) released the following statement today re: SB 1160: An Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety.

“I knew I was going to vote no. I cannot get by the premise of this bill. You have a deranged young man, a mass murderer who worshipped mass killers. We have ordinary citizens who never caused a problem in the past and never will. How do you connect the dots between the killer and the ordinary citizen? You are punishing the wrong group. Should we be here without a police report?

“I have a lot of rod and gun clubs in my district. I’m a member at one and I’ve gotten to know these people. They are not a problem. We are doing them a great harm. We are lumping them together with a madman.

“There is an economic component to this. Connecticut has a huge industry that produces fire arms and ammunitions. We have pride for our history in the firearms industry. We dedicated state money to make the Colt Complex in Hartford an historic landmark. There are 5,000 jobs in our state concentrated in the firearm industry.

“There is also a component that I only recently learned about, the large number of people who will boycott manufacturers that are in Connecticut because of something called brand damage. These gun buyers boycott manufacturers who make guns in states that have restrictive gun laws.
The CEO of Mossberg, a popular gun manufacturer is getting offers every day from other states to have them move their business.

“Here in Connecticut we tax people too much, we make it hard almost adversarial to run a business. You never want to trade money for blood, but if you don’t mention the economic component this argument is not honest. Here we are ready to throw out 5,000 jobs and yet we pay millions in corporate welfare to other companies for fewer jobs in some cases as little as 200 jobs.

“I’m a grandfather of 8 and 3 of the children are in elementary school and if I thought there was anything in this bill that would make them safer then I would vote for it. There isn’t.

“We could do good things including: reconstituting the gun trafficking task force and funding it with a million dollars. The task force works. It gets illegal guns off the streets. I support that. We could penalize straw buyers by charging them with tougher crimes and making this type of punishment a real deterrent. We could put more money in to school security. We could repeal the flawed program of early release from prison. All of those are good things.

“I think we should do something that does good not just feels good.”

Here is the legislation voted on by the Connecticut General Assembly. The final vote in the senate was 26 in favor 10 against. The final vote in the house was 105 in favor 44 against. The bill awaits the signature of the Governor. The administration has scheduled a signing ceremony for noon on Thursday, April 4. http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/TOB/S/2013SB-01160-R00-SB.htm

Here are the summaries of the legislation.