Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is looking for a way around the uncomfortable fact that Connecticut gun owners have, to a large extent, lifted a collective middle finger at the state’s post-Newtown firearms registration scheme. Desperately looking for a way to paper over the fact that tens of thousands of gun-owning Nutmeggers let the December 31 deadline pass without so much as a thought of compliance, the Malloy administration has concocted a new strategy for at least processing the late registration documents they received. As ctnewsjunkie.com reports, the governor’s minions are adopting an Obama-like approach to the law: “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration has concluded it can process without additional legislation some of the late-arriving firearm registration paperwork mailed in by gun owners attempting to comply with a new law” . . .

Legislation? We don’t need no steeenkin’ legislation.

Luke Bronin, the governor’s general counsel, said the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection has the authority to accept applications it has reason to believe were submitted before the deadline.

“For example, if an application to register a weapon was signed and notarized on or before January 1, 2014, or an application to register a high capacity magazine was signed and accompanied by an affidavit that was dated on or before such date, the department may treat such applications as timely submissions,” Bronin wrote in aletter to the DESPP commissioner.

“Similarly, if the department has reason to believe that an application was deposited in a mailbox or at a post office on Dec. 31, 2013, but the post office closed early or did not collect the deposited mail that day, then that application may be deemed a timely submission,” he wrote.

Because they say so. Soon they’ll be “deeming” paperwork mailed in months with a ‘R’ in them timely.

The Malloy administration had been using the day the forms were postmarked as the threshold for processing the paperwork. Last month the governor said state police retained the late paperwork but he insisted the legislature would need to pass a bill in order for them to process the forms. 

So before, legislation was a must. Now, not so much. Expediency uber alles.

How many additional registrations will this newly flexible legal stance encompass? Not nearly enough.

Under the decision, the department will accept certification forms for 160 rifles and 398 magazines which were notarized by Jan. 1 and postmarked by Jan. 4. The state received about 226 assault weapon applications and 506 high-capacity magazine declarations received by the state were postmarked shortly after the deadline.

That’s maybe a thousand people who are no longer Connecticut scofflaws. But by earlier estimates, there are at least 20,000 – and maybe as many as 100,000 – non-compliant gun owners. Will Malloy’s men attempt to cajole the state’s legions of newly-minted felons into registering through further feats of unilateral executive action and non-legislative legerdemain? Given that they no doubt will invent any excuse to avoid going door-to-door to collect unregistered guns, you can probably count on it.

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103 COMMENTS

  2. So, are people allowed to walk in and hand them paperwork NOW? Didn’t think so. All this does is sound like a concession to the will of the citizens of Connecticut, when in fact behind the scenes the governor is pushing for arrests and forced registration, followed by confiscation, then a state wide order to turn in weapons or face prison. Bet your ass on it, that is what they are working towards.

    • You can be sure that Malloy and his state police puppets are drawing up plans for mass arrests. They may take another route however. Go out and arrest just a few and make examples out of them. Its the totalitarian way of intimidation.

        • Don’t forget the kids. “Johnny, do Daddy and Mommy have scary guns at home?”

          For the children. (TM)

      • These people are crazy, but they are NOT stupid.

        There is no way they are planning on mass arrests and all the negative publicity that would go with such a huge tyrannical repression and the undoubted violent backlash. They worry about blood in the streets if they allow people their Second Amendment RKBA, but they WILL HAVE blood in the streets if they make any concerted effort to round up significant numbers of these scofflaws (Great word – scoffing at the laws!)

        What they WILL do is what tyrants have done throughout history when faced with this sort of civil disobedience; they will strategize as to the best possible individuals to target, either due to potential “anarchistic” violent response that can be plastered over the evening news, or perhaps a few “regular citizens” with a great deal to lose when faced with a felony conviction – money, status, family, gun rights, etc. They will start small, possibly with a few in each category, and make sure the MSM plays the arrests and legal actions to the max. The intent is, of course, to make ignoring the law so onerous that at some point the majority of people will submit. This is how tyrannies ALWAYS operate.

        “History does NOT repeat, but it DOES rhyme.” – Mark Twain

        • Finally somebody with some common sense. One way or another there will be blood. And LOTS of it to. If they truly want it they will get it. People want to throw that under the rug but they are dumber than dirt and will see when it happens and the state of ct provokes a Civil war on its people. No joke.

  3. Connecticut residence already rolled over,when they allowed it to happen..Just because they arent rushing to register doesnt mean anything.. Attrition will have them all in line to comply eventually.

    • Sad but true. They need to do more than simply not register. Sooner or later the majority of them will be caught unregistered. They will need to get the law repealed or they are simply delaying the inevitable.

  4. I think of the line from The Hunt for Red October,
    This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

  5. Soon they will find a particularly stupid man who can be counted on to resist violently. The state will Demi use him. They will make a very public effort to get his guns registered. He can be counted on to resist and they will kill him very publicly. Everyone else will register immediately afterwards after pleading to a misdemeanor failure to register.

    • I have no idea why my iPhone but Demi in my post above. Sorry. It was supposed to say the state will demonize him.

      • My iPhone auto-correct becomes particularly ornery after I’m really tired or had a couple of scotches. I have a theory about that. A little ear grease on the screen also makes matters worse. I need a new box of electronic alcohol wipes. Phones are nasty, dirty things.

    • Or perhaps he will take a few of them out to, who are you and myself or anyone else to say that he couldn’t?? Bottom like is many people are going to CONTINUE TO NOT COMPLy!!! To the very end and it will be war! Whether they win or not. Many of them will have casualties too. Hey if that’s what they want , I say being it.

  6. Conneticuts government pretends to pass lawful legislation, so the Connecticut citizenry pretends to obey it.

    Makes sense to me.Besides, it’s not Malloy offering amnesty to the gun owners.If you think about it for a moment, it is that states population of gun owners who are extending amnesty to HIM.

  7. Malloy and his ilk are scared. Losing face, losing credibility, realizing a LOT of law abiding firearm owners are telling them to FOAD, and realizing if they start going door to door to enforce this unconstitutional law well,….. Let’s just say the “second” shot heard round the world may very well happen again in CT.

    • The DA will ask if you will make your decision based on the law they were charged under. If you say yes, and nullify, you lied. A mistrial is claimed, the juror is charged with contempt or worse. If you tell the DA no, you will be excused from jury duty.

      Nullification in a courtroom isn’t a guarantee, unless the entire jury does so, and the next jury, and the next…

      • A juror is under no obligation to say why he voted the way he did. Tell the DA what ever it takes to get on the jury. Vote Not Guilty. Nothing they can do about it as long as you keep your mouth shut.

        • Nothimg says you must vote a particular way. You are charged with finding guilt based upon evidence and measuring it against the law. You have every right as a Juror to be able to change your mind from some biased question during jury selection.

      • You’re under no obligation to explain your decision as a juror, but if for some reason you were required to make a statement on it, “I didn’t feel the DA had sufficient evidence against the defendant…”

        But, that’s not likely to come up, so like Chris said, keep your mouth shut.

      • I believe there was a video here last week that explained that a jury/juror cannot be penalized for his vote. What the jury decides is the final step in the process in almost every case and the court cannot punish them for it, regardless of their reasoning.

      • If the second amendment is allowed to be trampled on by our elected officials, why would we believe they would continue to uphold any of the others? The Bill of Rights is all written on the same paper. If we let our government wipe its ass with one, then they are all on the same sheet of toilet paper. Once any one is gone it sets the stage to ignore them all, then they will search without warrants, arrest for speaking out, and hold people without trial. The Second Amendment isn’t the most important, they are all of equal importance! The Second Amendment has become the most contentious because, for some stupid reason, a large part of the America population seems to think that somehow, if they let the government take away that second one they won’t take away the others. After all they (Elected Officials) told us so right? They told us no one was trying to register guns, and confiscate guns. Right?

        • I have been watching this lawlessness for a while now. The progressives are trying to do at a State level what they cannot do at a National level. On a separate note, the POTUS would have been impeached by now if he was not the first African American President.

  9. If you like your guns you can keep them. It’s clear the people of Connecticut are well aware of what registration leads to. Hitler disarmed the people and gassed Millions. Stalin disarmed the masses and starved millions. There’s plenty of examples of what happens when the people submit to the powers of a dictatorial government. We have a Hitler in the White House, a Stalin running the Justice Department. Do you really trust any of these socialists? When its time to vote, make your voices heard at the polls.

    • I’ll go on record here on TTAG (and the NSA) by saying I don’t trust Obama or Holder. Feinstein, DeLeon, Yee, Pelosi and their ilk will never be in my circle of trust.

      • I don’t trust any politicians, in general, all of them should just walk about their day with sewn sponsor patches on their suites, like NASCAR or 3 gun competitors.

        “It’s a big club, and guess what? You ain’t in it…”

        -George Carlin

      • “I’ll go on record here on TTAG (and the NSA) by saying I don’t trust Obama or Holder. Feinstein, DeLeon, Yee, Pelosi”

        It’s not even a matter of trusting -them- the real question is do you trust EVERY politician to follow until the end of time, because any power abdicated by fiat or expressly given to the Government STAYS there loooong after the current crop of folks are gone unless we-the-people manage to get it undone.

    • “If voting made a real difference, elections would have been outlawed by now.”

      It took me a while to understand this concept. The establishment, both sides, Have the candidate choices locked down. “Independents” are mostly establishment shills in neutral form. Those that wish to get elected and have no political connections to the machine look to spend a LOT of money to get their message out. Even if they defeat the odds and get elected, they are blocked and/or corrupted throughout their term. The organization needed to drive the establishment parties out will either take decades of >50% participation and agreement, or the citizens all hitting the reset button at the same time. Both have about a snowflake’s chance in hell.

      Governments have had eons to perfect and tweak control over the masses. They are well funded, organized, and damn good at it. Next time you think voting really makes a difference, think again, and again, and again…

    • A friend of mine lives in Costa Rica. When obama started out he was revered, now he is a laughingstock & called the american hitler.

  10. As they say in chess, their move. I don’t see a house to house search, but ranges and gun shops offer a convenient way to spot check anyone carrying a bad gun to see if they registered it. And if a black rifle shows up in a traffic stop or some other police activity they can tack on charges while confiscating the piece.
    Just like Jersey. Only with more flair.
    I’d like to see these AR owners leave Conn for other states and take their abilities and earning power with them. Since these guns are not cheap it’s a good bet employed people own them and pay taxes too.

    • If they could accomplish it without national exposure, yes. Remember that gun grabbing is a very delicate process. One big push will set back their agenda more than a decade. Look for them to use a more incremental approach. I imagine the law will stand, but they will only enforce it when convenient.

    • I doubt it… If they didnt even bother moving out of State, they sure as hell aint gonna stand and risk dieing.
      most people will escape to safety before risking death .

  12. Are you kidding me? Could anyone be stupid enough to trust those leftist scum? Leaving aside the absurdity and foolishness of registering a firearm in the first place, once they can get gun owners to accept this false “amnesty” they will promptly charge them with felonies in order to A) confiscate their firearms and B) prevent them from legally obtaining other firearms in the future. As if an enterprising and evil leftist Attorney General (Lawlor, we’re looking at you) wouldn’t simply say that the Governor simply did not have legal authority to offer this ersatz amnesty and that all such gun owners must be prosecuted.

    • There were a lot of fools who voted for Mittens in the last presidential election, after he had already signed a gun ban in Mass. I wrote in a vote for Yosemite Sam, you know he is pro gun.

        • Give the guy a break; he probably lives in a very blue state.

          A red vote in a blue state means no more than a blue vote in a red one.

        • Do you know what state he voted in? Besides, Chris is on record as being for denying large parts of the population their rights. Wouldn’t surprise me he voted for barry and slow joe.

        • Yep. It’s still evil. Does anyone seriously doubt that Romney would have tried to get through some sort of gun control legislation that, while not as egregious as Obama’s attempt, would have had a much higher chance of passage? Because Republican. Heck, the man even campaigned on changing Obamacare to Romneycare. A distinction without a difference.

        • It bears repeating to the hard-heads: a vote for the “lesser of two evils” is a VOTE FOR EVIL.

          And Homey don’t play that.

      • I have never for the life of me understood this line of reasoning that, “Mitt Romney signed an Assault Weapons Ban and Obama didn’t pursue gun control in his first term, so I voted for Obama…” !?!?! For one, Mitt signed said Assault Weapons Ban as governor of a very blue state. Being Republican governor of a very blue state versus being the Republican President of the United States are two entirely different ballgames. You have to tow the national party line to a good degree as President, so no way would Romney have pushed for any AWB as president.

        And two, yes Obama didn’t pursue any gun control in his first term, but that was because a big part of his first term was campaigning for his second term. He could have lost re-election if he pursued it in his first term.

        • What you are saying describes strategy that many who read TTAG have failed to see. Many folks here actually thought Obama wouldn’t go after guns. Ridiculous.

          The unfortunate reality is that Ted Cruz / Rand Paul / Scott Walker / Ben Carson type politicians may not be able to navigate our BS presidential political process. Hillary might, but I hold distant hope that our nation is not collectively dumb enough to elect her in 2016.

        • They will vote her in and get the Government they deserve – it’s unfortunate. There are just too many low information voters out there.

        • And dead people voting. And maybe soon Illegals (think about that one for a second).

          Of course, that group could REALLY surprise the Dems in a “not good” way if they notice that we as a country are sliding in the direction of the country they came here from.

  13. Why would anyone who legally purchased property without having to register that property now do so? The very people who want the registration CAN’T be trusted to manage their responsibility to their constituents. They swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. Now they know where the guns are and who they can take them from. Politicians always lie so why would you believe them when they say its not for confiscation!

  15. Do what the Canadians did: register caulk guns, squirt guns, nail guns, bb guns and glue guns and any other guns I forgot.

      • Nope. That was one of several ways that Canadian citizens purposefully tainted the data, along with doing private sales (“I lost my gun in the snow, when the thaw came it was gone!”), and so forth. That, along with the billions of dollars wasted by RCMP beaurocrats to maintain the list, led to its demise.

        The scary part is that after the list was supposedly destroyed by the government after the registry laws’ repealment, police knew exactly which houses to break into to locate guns during the High River flooding in 2013 – indicating that long gun registration data is being kept illegally by the government.

        Sound familiar?

  16. Next example of civil disobedience is New York State. Just a handful of weeks. The deadline to register all AWs and deadly high cap magazines is April 15. Let’s see what happens, LMAO….

  17. Anyone else notice that they kept all of the registrations that were late, even though they didn’t plan to grant them amnesty?

    Sounds a lot like these people were the first to make “The List”…..

    Not a list I would want to be on.

  18. The owners who did not register their evil tools are not practicing civil disobedience. They are merely delaying the individual mandate. Y’know, like Obama did.

    • Civil disobedience?

      Wouldn’t that imply breaking the law at some point? Because Malloys ordinances on gun regulation and registration are illegal as they violate judicial precedent and the US Constitutuon.Thus, the CT population is under no grounds to obey the dictates.

      By extension, this also means there is no grounds for civil disobedience.

  19. I don’t need your amnesty Malloy, I am not a criminal. Only those who seek to subvert the Constitution need an amnesty. So perhaps offer yourself one?

    • Don’t give him amnesty. It’s not the job of people to be kind to our government. It’s the job of our government to serve us, The People.

  20. It is ok to register late… until they change their minds and send out confiscation letters with threats of felonies.

  21. To Connecticut gun owners: YOU’VE WON!! After you win is NO. TIME. FOR. COMPROMISE!!!

    You WON. 😀

  22. The only good I can see coming from ANY of this is the negative publicity the antis are getting from having significant numbers of law-abiding citizens ignore their unconstitutional law. This makes the governor and all the politicians that passed this law look stupid and by association all the anti-2A people and groups who supported the legislation.

    The next part will be a lot of political theater and will show once and for all exactly where the grabbers stand on the political spectrum. I am very glad I am not in CT (and not just because I can’t ever remember how to spell it) because SOMEONE is going to get hurt before this is all over. If the state foolishly cracks down with all their official authority to repress the citizenry it will reveal their fascist underpinnings and the tyrannical nature of gun control efforts for the entire world to see. From there it is just a question of how many American fence sitters wake up to the monster they have allowed to be created in their backyard. Forget looking for Bigfoot, the real terror is in your various government bodies and they have been allowed to breed unfettered for too long.

    • Maybe they could start with the pinhead editors at the Courant who thought the law didn’t apply to them.

    • Background check database is useless. See my post below. It only tracks sales to or from dealers.
      The DESPP can not use this data for anything other than intimidation. Refuse to talk, and you shut the process down.

  24. “If ever there was proof that citizen disarmament demanders are lying when they scoff at legitimate fears that background checks provide a registration capability, this is it. And if ever there was further corroboration that they intend using that registration to enable confiscation, The Courant just removed all doubt.”

    Yep It sucks being right all the time, doesn’t it?

  25. “Connecticut gun owners have, to a large extent, lifted a collective middle finger at the state’s post-Newtown firearms registration scheme.”

    Connecticut gun owners need to raise the other middle finger and present both of them to the esteemed governor. What arrogance! This idiot will “deem” registrations to be on time if they meet certain date stamps. How did this state let crap like that happen?

  26. Is that like:: putting all of Connecticut on Double Secret Probation? I wonder if he plans to hold his breath as well.

  28. Anyone who thinks the DESPP can go off of transfer records and start arresting people is displaying a simple ignorance of the law.

    Prior to 4/4/13, CT only tracked secondary transfers of handguns. So if you bought a long gun at a dealer, then sold it to bob, and bob sold it to stan, and stan sold it to Sue, the state has no idea where it is. All they know is that you bought it originally.

    if you are ever questioned about who you sold it to and you SHUT THE F$#K UP about it. Then everybody wins. Remember, you don’t have to talk to the police.

    Because they only track sales to and from licensees, the state has bad data. And they know it. It is not actionable data they could use for an arrest. They could certainly start asking questions based on transfer data, but if the first buyer refuses to cooperate, the cops are dead in the water.

    Even now, despite the fact that all in-state transfers must be recorded with the state, there are still holes in the system. If you sell a firearm out of state, the DESPP will not know you sold it, it will remain “registered” to you after the sale. This doesn’t create anywhere near the inaccuracy there used to be befoe 4/4/13, but it helps.

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