Perhaps the worst thing about working for stronger gun laws is that things don’t often seem to change until something goes wrong. You can talk all day about how great a new law would be, or how much safer it would make American citizens. But until people see a problem, or an unecessary tragedy occurs, lots of legislators just don’t get it, or are too distracted by the gun lobby to step up and make a difference.
A columnist in the New Haven Register laments that same fact today while discussing the Connecticut bill that would make it a requirement for gun owners whose guns are lost or stolen to report them as such.
The sad truth is that death can be very effective in reviving certain types of legislation.
Take, for example, a bill that would make it a crime for Connecticut gun owners to fail to report the theft or loss of a firearm.
The bill was prompted by a rising level of urban gun violence and complaints from Connecticut law enforcement about their frustrating attempts to halt the flow of firearms into the streets.
Police and federal officers said that their attempts to trace the origins of guns used in crimes often hit a wall when the original owners claimed they had lost the gun and failed to report it or that it had been stolen without their knowledge.
Law enforcement experts say such flimsy excuses allow gun owners to get away with selling weapons to criminals or trading them for drugs.
Lawmakers responded with a bill that would have required gun owners to report to police the loss or theft of a firearm within 72 hours of it happening. Failure to do so would result in a fine of $500. If police could prove that failure was intentional, the fine could be increased to $2,000, a year in prison or both.
In late April, the bill cruised through the state Senate on a 30-5 bipartisan vote.
But the National Rifle Association and Connecticut sportsmen’s groups mounted an all-out lobbying offensive to block it in the House. Even the arrest of a Shelton gun dealer, who’d “lost track” of 83 guns, wasn’t enough to convince lawmakers of the need for the bill.
Opponents warned the bill could result in law-abiding gun owners being charged with crimes or fined when they simply didn’t realize their firearm had been lost or stolen.
The bill was killed on a 79-66 House vote.
There is no downside to a bill like this. Gun owners whose guns are lost or stolen should want to report the theft of those firearms to police anyway, right? Why wouldn’t they want to find their lost firearms? Requiring it just closes off the loophole of unscrupulous gun dealers who “lose” firearms to criminals, simply to report them missing when the police show up after a murder has been committed with them. These are not the kinds of people you want to protect, and this has happened again and again.
And yet, the NRA continues to fight reasonable, strong gun laws like this. And the issue is dead– until another tragedy happens.
New Haven Police Chief Francisco Ortiz had a grim explanation of why the issue is back again.
In 2005, he said, there were 15 homicides in his city, and nine of those involved guns. Last year, the number of killings jumped to 24. Ortiz said 22 of those were gun-related.
“You’ll be saving the lives of many of our children in our urban centers,” Ortiz said of passage of the gun-control measure.
That’s the good side of all of this– when legislation like this does pass, it means we don’t have to wait any longer for another gun death to happen. Many times, it does take a tragedy to get stronger gun laws passed– but it doesn’t have to. And if legislators wake up from the slumber the NRA seems to have put them in, and start giving our citizens what they’re asking for, we’ll have to face that many fewer gun deaths. Reporting lost and stolen firearms this way holds those responsible who should be held reponsible. And that, as the police chief says, saves lives.
