Bob, Please copy the CCS membership.
I attended the event sponsored by CAGV this afternoon
at the Lyceum Center in Hartford.
There was no public speaking forum, as it was a
moderated event
by Dr. Bradley, the President of CAGV who only had
cards with questions collected from the audience of
about 75 people.
I was only able to positively identify one other
shooting sportsman at the event besides myself and
believe there was one other. The rest of the audience
consisted of the usual CAGV cadre of elderly women and
a fair number of local residents of Hartford
The panel consisted of:
* Brian Malte: Brady Campaign's state lobbyist
* Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford
* Joe Vince (ATF ret)
* Chief James Berry, Manchester PD
* Ron Pinciaro, Co-executive director of CAGV
Lisa Labella of CAGV was also present
The legislative "responder panel" consisted of:
Sen. Andrea Stillman
Rep. Ken Green (not Len Greene)
Rep. James Spallone
Rep. Robert Farr
Rep. Mike Lawlor (HJud co-chair)
Sen. McDonald (Jud. co-chair)
The Hartford police chief was also in attendence in
uniform stating openly that he is a supporter of the
Brady Campaign and was accompanied by a number of
higher ranking Hartford PD officers in uniform
The main message was to stop gun trafficing with
secondary
themes addressing: LONG GUN registration (Lawlor);
Stolen Gun reporting mandates (all); SMART GUNS,
serialized bullet tracking/tracing; one-gun-per-month
(Malte of Brady Campaign);
AMMUNITION RESTRICTIONS /LICENSING AND QUANTITY OF
PURCHASE RESTRICTIONS - - Chief Berry of Manchester;
AMMUNITION SIN TAX proposed by Senator McDonald
Chief Berry continued on his anti-gun tirade - in
uniform AND wearing his handgun off duty and outside
of Manchester stating that he is an NRA instructor but
believes most people don't take gun ownership
seriously enough and wants limts imposed on buying
ammo. He continued with the argument that England and
Japan have
less gun crime than the US.
Joe Vince was among the more logical sounding
panelists suggesting that enforcement and intelligence
should be streamlined adn improved to solve gun crimes
and suggested that police should be more concerned
about the "gang member with the .380 than a secondary
long gun sale at a gun show"
Rep. Robert Farr did state during the panel discussion
that one of the problems CT has is 30,000 outstanding
warrants that need to be persued ; 6,000 of which are
for felonies and 2,000 of those belonging to Hartford,
alone.
I submitted a series of well written questions
relevant to the topics discussed and the only one Dr.
Bradley used from my inex card was "Why do we need
more gun laws - why not enforce existing
laws" To that end, Mike Lawlor answered to the effect
that they
weren't really seeking new laws but wanted to "close
the loopholes" on existing ones.
Ron Pinciaro displayed contradictory themes
during his remarks opening with " we're not here to
take guns away from citizens - we're not gun grabbers"
His closing remark was: "The guns that are being sold
today are not hunting or sporting guns, they're
designed to kill - they're semi-automatic and 9mms,
etc."
That was the end of the forum
Expect movement on TRAFFICING; LONG GUN REGISTRATION
and STOLEN GUN REPORTING legislation soon and be
prepared to monitor the other items.
Regards,
Steve