Earlier this month, I
pointed to a 2011 Connecticut legislative report to make the
point that registration of “assault weapons” and high-capacity
magazines under a particularly stupid new state law demonstrated
that gun owners were continuing a long and proud tradition of
defying restrictions on weapons ownership. Now lawmakers and
journalists in the state acknowledge the same phenomenon, and the
mass scofflawry it represents, and wonder just what corner they’ve
backed themselves into.
Three years ago, the Connecticut legislature estimated
there were 372,000 rifles in the state of the sort that might be
classified as “assault weapons,” and two million plus high-capacity
magazines. Many more have been sold in the gun-buying boom since
then. But by the close of registration at the end of 2013, state
officials received around 50,000 applications for “assault weapon”
registrations, and 38,000 applications for magazines.
Ummm. Errr.
As Dan Haar writes for the
Hartford Courant:
And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created
tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000
people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other
laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all
of them are committing Class D felonies.“I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast
majority would register,” said Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, the
ranking GOP senator on the legislature’s public safety committee.
“If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don’t
follow them, then you have a real problem.”
From a politicians’ perspective, this is a problem. The
sheep are refusing to be herded. But this was a completely
predictable “problem.” These laws
always experience more defiance than compliance, in
the United States and around the world. The reasons people resist
restrictions on their ability to own weapons probably vary, but the
empowerment that comes with owning arms probably plays a role, and
government officials’ eternal and consistent lying about why they
want to know who is armed certainly does, too.
Of course, if you value liberty over government officials’
whims, and consider government to be little more than a protection
racket with better PR, this is hardly a problem at all.
Mike Lawlor, an undersecretary in the state Office of Policy and
Management and leading mouthpiece for this legislative disaster,
pretends the “problem” could be solved by … writing letters.
The problem could explode if Connecticut officials decide to
compare the list of people who underwent background checks to buy
military-style rifles in the past, to the list of those who
registered in 2013. Do they still own those guns? The state might
want to know.“A lot of it is just a question to ask, and I think the firearms
unit would be looking at it,” said Mike Lawlor, the state’s top
official in criminal justice. “They could send them a letter.”
But those letters are unlikely to be terribly intimidating,
because a background check isn’t proof that somebody owns a
forbidden rifle. They might have moved it out of state, destroyed
it, lost it, or sold it privately in a transaction that won’t be
regulated under state law until April 2014.
Ultimately, Lawlor compares the defiance of registration to that
of speed restrictions on the roads. “Like anything else, people who
violate the law face consequences. … that’s their decision.”
Nice spin, Mike. But speeding doesn’t leave scofflaws under
threat of felony charges, armed, and pissed off at control freak
government officials. You really should have seen this coming.
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