With just 35 days until Election Day, Connecticut Senate Democrats are spotlighting Republican opposition to a gun safety law passed last year.
Meanwhile, Republicans argue that while Democrats push for stricter gun laws, they remain lenient on crime.
This debate highlights the stark differences between the parties on addressing gun violence, which is not only reflected in the actions of elected officials but also in voter opinions expressed in recent polls.
A recent poll conducted by The Connecticut Mirror found that twice as many Democrats as Republicans consider gun policy a top issue in the presidential race.
National surveys show similar divisions.
Senate Democrats’ Monday messaging is part of a broader strategy to expand their 24-12 majority by targeting Republican incumbents who position themselves as moderates in swing districts.
Often, they present themselves as moderates in their districts, but we find them to be quite different at the Capitol, said Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven.
Looney pointed to a law passed in 2023 as an example. The legislation, which was highlighted Monday, represents the first major update to Connecticut’s gun laws since the reforms enacted after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.
The bill, introduced by Governor Ned Lamont, banned the open carry of firearms, strengthened rules on gun storage, mandated reporting of stolen firearms, and expanded the state’s ban on AR-15s and other assault weapons. It passed by a 24-11 vote, with one senator absent.
“Big surprise: Democrats are playing politics five weeks before Election Day, said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.
In 2023, Republicans sought to enhance laws against illegal gun crimes.
Republicans voted as a bloc in favor of 14 GOP amendments, all of which were defeated along party lines.
One amendment would have loosened safe-storage rules by allowing a firearm to be kept in a locked room or apartment instead of a secured safe.
“Republicans proposed an amendment that would allow a gun to be left unsecured as long as the home doors were locked,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk.
That would have completely undermined our safe storage law, and every Senate Republican supported it.
Other Republican amendments focused on being tougher on crime. One proposed exempting gun crimes from the state’s clean slate law, which allows for the erasure of certain criminal records.
Another aimed to repeal a rule that limits searches by consent unless officers have reasonable suspicion that a person possesses weapons or evidence of a crime.
The only Republican senator to support the new gun law was Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, whose district includes Newtown. Senator Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, missed the final vote due to mixed opinions in her rural district.
Hwang is among four Republican incumbents who won their 2022 races with less than 51% of the vote. The others are Ryan Fazio of Greenwich, Lisa Seminara of Avon, and Jeff Gordon of Woodstock.
This is all politics, said Fazio, who won with 50.1% of the vote in 2022. Fazio noted that former President Donald Trump underperformed in his district four years ago, losing statewide by 20 points and trailing many down-ballot Republican candidates.
“If I presided over a 35% rise in homicides in the state, I wouldn’t be blaming the minority party for unsafe policies,” Fazio added.
Homicides spiked in Connecticut during the COVID pandemic, mirroring national trends.
A state Department of Public Health study found a 42% increase in Connecticut’s homicide rate from 2020 to 2022 compared to the four years before the pandemic.
Despite this, Connecticut’s overall violent crime rates remain low. Connecticut is the fourth-safest state in the nation, and that’s no accident, said Duff. It’s because of our criminal justice reforms and strong gun laws.
Forbes ranks Connecticut as the fourth-safest state, behind New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island, based on crime rates and residents’ chances of becoming victims of violent crime.
Since the adoption of police accountability laws in 2020 and other criminal justice reforms, there has been debate over the correlation between these policies and crime rates.
After a spike in 2020, crime in Connecticut resumed its downward trend in 2021. In 2022, the state’s violent crime rate reached its lowest point in a decade.
Harding, however, believes that statewide statistics don’t reflect the violent crime crisis in some cities.
Republicans have always been the ‘Party of Public Safety,’ while Democrats only pay lip service to addressing gun crime in urban and low-income areas, he said.