Connecticut Crackdown Shows ‘Paranoia’ Over Firearms Confiscation Could be Justified

One of the fears engendered by 2013’s failed federal background check proposal was that it would create a de facto gun registry that, eventually, could lead to confiscation. Gun control zealots dismissively mocked that fear as paranoid, a depiction parroted by their lackeys in the mainstream media.

But events in Connecticut are proving that fear to be all too real.

The Connecticut State Police Special Licensing & Firearms Unit has begun mailing out notices to several thousand — exact figures are unavailable — gun owners who attempted to register their newly outlawed semi-automatic firearms and magazines holding more than 10 rounds with the state but did not do so before the Jan. 1. The deadline was imposed by Connecticut’s April 2013 “assault weapons” ban.

The notice reads: “We are returning your application for [an] assault rifle certificate and/or [a] large capacity magazine declaration because it was not received or postmarked prior to January 1, 2014 as required by law.”

It demands that unsuccessful registrants — estimates range up to 12,000 received the notice — surrender their firearms and magazines to police, sell them to a gun dealer, remove them from the state or render them inoperable. If the recipient fails to do so — no deadline is offered — he/she faces a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison as a Class D felon.

“Because these owners attempted to register their guns and accessories, the state can now prosecute them at will because they know exactly who they are,” writes Kit Daniels in Infowars.com on Feb. 25.

Which is likely why only about 47,000 of an estimated 375,000 to 400,000 affected Connecticut gun owners registered their firearms by the Jan. 1 deadline, opting instead to risk being classified as felons rather than disclose their personal information as registered semiautomatic firearms owners to the state.

The unsuccessful registrants are “now on the state’s radar for owning guns that became illegal overnight,” the state’s largest newspaper, The Hartford Courant writes. “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.”

For more, go to:
— “Surrender Your Firearms,” Connecticut Tells Unregistered Gun Owners
— Dan Haar: Untold Thousands Flout Gun Registration Law
— Is Gun Confiscation on the Way in Connecticut? See the Letter the State Is Reportedly Sending to Owners of Newly ‘Illegal’ Firearms
— CT: Those who missed gun registration deadline getting letters from state police
— Botched registration leads to confiscation in Connecticut
— Connecticut Gun Law Ignored as Thousands Don’t Register AR-15s
— Connecticut Tells Gun Owners, Destroy or Hand Over Rifles & Standard Capacity Magazines