Connecticut Bureaucrats Battle After Man Declines to Show Gun Permit

If you need any further
evidence of the stupidity of turning a right that you can exercise
at will into a privilege that requires official permission and
paperwork, cast your eyes on the case of Scott Lazurek and the
bureaucratic battle being waged over his gun permit. In a dispute
that a Connecticut prosecutor describes as a “nothing case,”
Lazurek was arrested because he apparently got sick of
papers-please hassles and declined to show his permit to openly
carry a gun to West Haven police. Now one Connecticut government
agency is
suing another, and Lazurek has become a cause celebre for gun
rights advocates, as well as a lightning rod for bureaucratic
idiocy.

It all started on June 2, 2013, when Lazurek, a security guard,
and another man walked along the West Haven boardwalk with
holstered guns on their hips. Two security guards from a competing
employer police officers stopped the men and demanded to see
their pistol permits. Lazurek refused, and was arrested. Among his
possessions the government employed security guards found his
pistol permit.

When the court dismissed the case a month later, prosecutor John
Barney himself
downplayed Lazurek’s alleged offense.

“It kind of was a nothing case. He had no record. He’s a
security guard. All it boiled down to was he had a valid permit to
carry. There were no issues; he wasn’t doing anything wrong with
it. When police officers approached him and said to show it, he was
just stubborn with letting them see it. So they arrested him on
interfering because he was giving them a hard time.”

The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, so it took the state
Board of Firearms
Permit Examiners until July of this year to hold a hearing on
the matter and until August 1 to give him back his permit.

Remember, Lazurek had threatened nobody. He was arrested only
for failing to produce a piece of paper which legally allowed him
to do as part of his job what the people arresting him were also
doing as part of their jobs—carrying a pistol openly.

So, a year-plus later, he got his permit back.

That pissed off the state Department of Emergency Services and
Public Protection. That agency objects that Lazurek is not a
“suitable person” to be allowed a pistol permit because “at the
hearing, Lazurek testified that gven the same set of circumstances
he would respond in the same fashion and would again refuse to
enable officers to ascertain whether he was legally carrying his
weapon.” Or so they say in the lawsuit
filed by the Department of Emergency Services and Public
Protection against the Board of Firearms Permit Examiners and
Lazurek.

Hey, Lazurek didn’t show due deference to competing security
guards, and he insisted that carrying a gun is a right—he’s
definitely not a Department of Emergency Services and Public
Protection kind of guy.

The Connecticut Citizens Defense League is raising money
to help Lazurek, who is a member. But watching two Connecticut
state agencies battle in court (with taxpayer money) would just be
good sport—if their tussle didn’t involve granting permission to
people to exercise their rights.