From alanb@graham.main.nc.us Tue Jun 8 01:39:26 1999 Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 11:13:03 -0400 (EWT) From: Alan Bellamente To: "William C. Hammel" Subject: Fascists May 31, 1999 Gun Owners Fear Connecticut Bill on Gun Seizures By MIKE ALLEN WALLINGFORD, Conn. -- Cathy Smittner has spent the past eight months coaching her 3-year-old grandson, Lenny Smittner, on the fine points of firing a pellet rifle at silhouettes and clay pigeons in the back yard, starting with the rule that he doesn't put his finger on the trigger unless he is ready to squeeze it. To Ms. Smittner, 49, a secretary who is a competition bulls-eye shooter, the lessons are all about safety, discipline and sportsmanship. But she said one of her neighbors finds the whole idea of giving a 3-year-old a real gun wacky and even terrifying, and she fears that he is about to get another kind of weapon to use against her, courtesy of the Connecticut Legislature. As part of a wave of gun restrictions that is surging through the nation's legislatures since the April massacre in Littleton, Colo., lawmakers in Connecticut are supporting a measure that would allow police to get warrants to enter the residence and seize the firearms of a citizen who "poses a risk of imminent personal injury to himself or herself or to other individuals." Among the factors that a judge would consider before issuing such a warrant are whether the person has made threats, brandished a firearm, engaged in "recent acts of cruelty to animals"or behaved erratically. Within two weeks after the guns are picked up, a court must hold a hearing to determine whether the firearms should be returned or "held by the state." Gun-rights activists contend that the proposal validates their worst fears: This time, they say, the state really is coming to get their guns. These gun owners say they fear that neighbors will report them to police as being erratic simply for acts that the neighbors dislike or find strange. The bill has drawn close attention by both sides in the national gun-control debate, because Connecticut already is one of the five toughest states on guns, and the warrant approach is seen as a possible new frontier for firearms restrictions when legislatures reconvene next winter just before the congressional and presidential elections. Robert Ricker, the executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, the lobbying group for firearms manufacturers, called the provision "absolutely a nightmare" that could legitimize retaliation in everything from custody disputes to spats about barking dogs. But Joseph Sudbay, the director of state legislation for Handgun Control Inc., said he sees clippings all the time about people who kill with guns after giving off warning signs. "One of the recurring themes after these incidents is that people knew there was a danger but were at a loss for what to do," he said. "Connecticut is trying to at least provide a forum to address that problem." Supporters of the warrant bill, which has passed two legislative committees and is headed for consideration by the state House and Senate in the next two weeks, say it will allow the authorities to prevent tragedies when there are warning signs like the ones some parents and classmates said were obvious before the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton. The National Rifle Association, however, has dubbed it the "Turn in Your Neighbor" plan. "It smacks of some sort of totalitarian regime, where kids are urged to report their parents to the party," said Robert Crook, the executive director of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, the state's biggest hunting group. "If I walk out of my house with a gun, that's one of the criteria. If I have an animal-rights person next to me and I'm shooting in my yard and he thinks my dog doesn't like it, he's got me." State Sen. George Jepsen, a Democrat from Stamford who is the majority leader, replied that if people wanted to make up stories about their neighbors, they could do that now by accusing them of assault or some other crime. "This deals with very concrete situations where a guy is clearly going off the wall while legally in possession of weapons," Jepsen said. "Tragically, it's utterly predictable that sooner or later, somebody is going to kill people in Connecticut, and it will have been perfectly clear to people around the shooter that he should not have had the guns he legally possessed." That is little consolation to the beleaguered Second-Amendment-first crowd, which now may be cornered. At the snack bar of the Blue Trail Range and Gun Shop here in Wallingford during a recent lunch hour, the talk included not just the usual excuses for a poor round at the range ("the world was turning"), but bitter and somewhat resigned griping about the upper hand apparently held by gun-control supporters, who are racing to use as leverage the fears of guns that have been stirred up among suburban voters since the Littleton and other school shootings. "They can't catch the criminals, but they can find us," said Al Jacobs, 62, a retired electronics worker. "We're an easy mark." "They aren't taking mine away," Arthur Rasmussen, a 57-year-old veterinarian, said with mock menace, drawing laughs from his buddies. Out on the range later, Timothy Srenaski helped his 13-year-old son, Andrew, use a .22-caliber rifle to blast tight circles into a target pinned 100 yards away. "Littleton was a terrible tragedy, but it would be an equally large tragedy for legislators to overreact," said Srenaski, 42, a building contractor. "Those kids had bombs and propane tanks, too. Why go after the guns?" Legislators point out that they had proposed the warrant measure even before the shootings in Colorado, although they say this spring's wave of school violence -- and the political fear and opportunism that have followed -- have given the bill a much better chance of passage. Gov. John Rowland, a Republican who seems to become more moderate by the month, said he has not made a decision about which of several gun-control proposals he would sign, but said, "If there's some reasonable way to make it safer out there, I'll always support that." The warrant provision was written by state Rep. Michael Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven and the co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who said he thought of it after a fatal shooting rampage by an employee at the state lottery headquarters last year. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company