HARTFORD – State Senate President Martin Looney (D-New Haven) and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) issued the following statement today in response to a federal lawsuit filed by two Republican state legislators from Connecticut and the Connecticut Citizens Defense League seeking to repeal Connecticut’s assault weapons ban:
“Right now, Connecticut is in the midst of a jury trial to determine how much money Alex Jones has to pay for spreading lies about the massacre of 26 people with an AR-15 rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. And here we are 10 years later still having to fight in court to prove that owning AR-15s and other high capacity, semiautomatic rifles is not an inherent right and does not make you any safer – in fact, Republican states with little or no gun laws have the highest rates of gun violence in America.
“Our bipartisan 2013 Sandy Hook vote to ban certain firearms and high-capacity magazines was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Now, two Connecticut Republican legislators are leading the charge to overturn that bipartisan law. But the people of Connecticut have no intention of bowing to a well-armed gun lobby and allow them to kill our necessary, bipartisan, firearms safety laws.”