Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Gun control activists and anti-gun politicians love to claim that we need new federal restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms because state-level gun control laws aren’t enough to reduce violent crime, even though these same activists are continually pushing to add more gun control laws to the books at the state and even local level.
And when those local or state-level gun control bills get turned into gun control laws, those anti-gun politicians never tell the public “just so you know, this really won’t do much of anything until and unless the federal government puts these same laws in place.” No, instead they generally promise that the newly-signed laws will be valuable life-saving measures that will make their state (or city) a safer place.
That was certainly the case in Connecticut back in 2013, when, just months after the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Gov. Dannell Malloy signed sweeping gun control measures into law while ensuring residents that the new restrictions would make a real difference in terms of public safety.
“This is a profoundly emotional day, I think, for everyone in this room and everyone watching what is transpiring today in the state of Connecticut,” Malloy said before sitting down at a table and signing the bill, bit by bit, with a succession of pens that were then passed to Newtown family members and lawmakers as souvenirs of the historic moment.
“We have come together in a way that relatively few places in our nation have demonstrated an ability to do,” Malloy said. “In some senses, I hope that this is an example to the rest of the nation — certainly to our leaders in Washington, who seem so deeply divided about an issue such as universal background checks, where the country is not divided itself.”
“When 92 percent of Americans agree that every gun sale should be subject to a background check” — as required in the new Connecticut law, but not in federal law — “then there’s no excuse for representatives or senators who don’t come to the assistance of those that they are elected to represent,” Malloy said.
Universal background checks, a ban on so-called assault weapons… even background checks on ammunition purchases. The package signed by Malloy in 2013 was almost everything gun control activists wanted. And in the first few years after the bills were signed, violent crime and homicides decreased across the state (and the rest of the nation). But as retired Navy SEAL, Newsmax host, and Connecticut resident Carl Higbie points out on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, the decline in crime didn’t last very long.
In 2014, the first full year that the new gun control laws were on the books, there were 88 homicides in Connecticut. In 2015, the numbers climbed to 112. By 2019, there were 120 homicides, and last year murders soared by 30% to 157.
“These gun laws were written by people who know nothing about guns, and quite frankly nothing about laws either” says Higbie. “Nothing in that law would have stopped the Sandy Hook shooting. Zero effect. There’s absolutely nothing in that law that would have had any effect or bearing on preventing that shooting, which is what we see from most gun laws.”
Looking at Connecticut’s homicide rate, which has continued spiraling upwards in 2021, it’s pretty clear that the state’s gun control laws aren’t having any effect whatsoever. Homicides increased in the first year that they were in place, and started trending upwards again long before the nationwide crime spike that began in June of last year.
Higbie says that he and other law-abiding residents have had to wait for months in order for local police to approve them to buy a handgun, while the individuals who are doing the shooting and killing in Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport are paying no mind whatsoever to the gun control laws on the books; not the permit-to-purchase, gun and ammunition licensing, or magazine and “assault weapon” bans.
Of course, Higbie doesn’t expect the state’s laws to change anytime soon, unless it’s by court order. He says that a majority of residents are still willing to believe the lies of politicians like Dannel Malloy and current governor Ned Lamont, who are always eager to promise big results from their gun control proposals. When those laws fail, their excuse is that we need even more gun control; either at the federal level, state level, or most commonly, both.
Check out the entire interview with Carl Higbie in the video window above for more discussion about rising crime, gun control, and why the Left is demanding more gun control laws at the same time they’re fighting to reduce funding for the police who are supposed to enforce them.