Blumenthal Calls ‘Connecticut Effect’ Comment ‘Callous & Offensive’
by Christine Stuart | Feb 12, 2013 2:24pm
(13) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Congress, Town News, Newtown, Public Safety, White House
(Updated 4:17 p.m.) Hours before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address where he will discuss the issue of gun violence, Sen. Richard Blumenthal wasn’t going to let the remarks of a gun lobbyist go unchecked.
This past weekend Bob Welch, a lobbyist, said the NRA’s agenda has been delayed by the “Connecticut effect.” Welch was referring to the Sandy Hook School shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults and prompted a national conversation on gun control.
Welch was described as an NRA lobbyist from Wisconsin, but the NRA said in statement to CTNewsJunkie that Welch “is neither a staff lobbyist nor a contract lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. He does not speak for the NRA.”
Welch’s remarks were captured by Think Progress and republished by The Huffington Post.
“We have a strong agenda coming up for next year, but of course a lot of that’s going to be delayed as the “Connecticut effect” has to go through the process,” Welch told a Wisconsin audience.
“After Connecticut, I had one of the leading Democrats in the legislature — he was with us most of the time, not all the time — he came to me and said, ‘Bob, I got all these people in my caucus that really want to ban guns and do all this bad stuff, we gotta give them something. How about we close this gun show loophole? Wouldn’t that be good?’ And I said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ And so far, nothing’s happened on that,” Welch said.
Blumenthal called the remarks “callous and offensive.”
“If the NRA believes that Americans are going to forget what happened two months ago this week, it is sorely mistaken,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “What the NRA doesn’t seem to understand is that the so-called ‘Connecticut effect’ is actually 20 children with their whole lives ahead of them taken from us in a matter of seconds — and six courageous educators who simply came to school to help children and, instead, lost their lives trying to protect them. The unimaginable pain their families and the Newtown community and our nation feel will not wear off anytime soon.”
He said what happened in Newtown was a “seismic change in our nation’s conscience.”
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Blumenthal asked NRA President Wayne LaPierre to take the Sandy Hook Promise and he agreed.
But the NRA is trying to rally its own support against the expansion of universal background checks — a measure that’s widely supported even by the gun lobby in Connecticut.
At a gun show in Virginia this past weekend, the NRA was handing out flyers titled: “NO to ‘Universal’ Background Checks” saying “While banning guns and magazines is being actively promoted by the anti-gunners, the criminalization of private firearm transfers is the centerpiece of their anti-Second Amendment efforts. This is part of a strategy to chip away at our Second Amendment rights under the guise of being ‘reasonable.’”
Background checks are done on all retail guns sales, but background checks are not required for gun show purchases or private sales.
In Connecticut, Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told state lawmakers earlier this month that his group supports improving universal background checks and opening up the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to manufacturers. He admits the group, which is based in Newtown, received push-back from gun owners who felt similar proposals made by the organization in the past violated the Second Amendment.
Tags: Richard Blumenthal, NRA, gun lobby, background checks, dh
(13) Comments
posted by: lebron | February 12, 2013 3:33pm
What Dick Blumenthal, Chris Murphy, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Diane Feinstien need to get through their collective thick heads is that using only certain Victims of Gun Violence at the SOTU address is “Callous and Offensive”
Wonder why there are no victims from Hartford or Chicago .... Oh that’s right, that’s not the kind of “Gun Violence” we want to exploit. Lets try and stay focused here…
Wonder when the victims from Newtown will begin to realize they are being used to clean up the political “mess” of gun control and then thrown away like a used paper towel.
posted by: Chien DeBerger | February 12, 2013 4:54pm
Senator Blumenthal, what is callous and offensive is how you are using the families as pawns for your agenda. Here we have yet had a budget from you and you are wasting your time on laws that have not worked in the past. That sir, is the definition of insanity.
You lack the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the lives being saved daily from the lawful use of firearms by law abiding citizens. You fail to acknowledge that even though gun ownership has risen especially among women, that the violent crime rates are the lowest since the mid-1960’s. As a police officer in this state for 33 years and still serving, you were an embarrassment to Connecticut as Attorney General and you and Senator Murphy are pathetic. We would have been better off with Laurel and Hardy representing Connecticut.
posted by: tmzphoto | February 12, 2013 5:15pm
Funny how Blumenthal and his ilk always say that comments they disagree with are “insulting,” and “it’s not the right time for that.” While gun advocates and the NRA were silent for a week out of respect, the gun grabbers immediately leapt to take advantage. They finally got their opening, and aren’t going to let a perfectly good tragedy go to waste. It’s disgusting. Connecticut now has ninety, NINETY!, bills looking to curtail, ban, and seize the property and rights of law abiding citizens who have committed no crimes. The grabbers like to say, “Relax, nobody is coming for your guns.” Really? How is “banning the possession of” any better? Welcome to the People’s Republic of Connecticut. Well, you can have it. I’ll move my family and our six figure tax paying incomes out of the state before I’ll submit to that. And I won’t be the only one.
posted by: DirtyJobsGUy | February 12, 2013 6:26pm
Perhaps Dick is afraid decency might come to say its time to stop using the dead children as political pawns. This is especially true as the Police Report on the shootings is due to be released in a few weeks. Why not give it a rest for a while. in addition, if you look at the incidence of mass school shootings in the US, there were none during the years 1900-1960. The worst all occurred after 1960 corresponding to the period of de-institutionalization of the seriously mentally ill.
CT is way behind other states in our mental health protections.
As I noted before Utah is the 2nd most armed state and has a murder rate that is half of CT’s. This has little to do with guns.
posted by: sofaman | February 13, 2013 8:47am
More misinformation. A vast majority of states with “Free” i.e. loose gun laws have significantly higher murder rates than CT. Fact: since Australia banned assault rifles after their own “Newtown” they’ve had ZERO mass murders. Guns make societies MORE dangerous.
posted by: DirtyJobsGUy | February 13, 2013 12:10pm
Sofaman,
How about Vermont? Its right next door and its gun rights are in the state constitution (ethan allen and all that). There are very few restrictions and the right to carry applies to both residents and non residents.
Murder Rates?
VT (2011) 1.3 per 100,000
CT (2011) 3.7 per 100,000
Yep the reality is we have a gang and city problem not a gun problem
posted by: lebron | February 13, 2013 3:09pm
To rebut Sofaman,
Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.”
Quote by Joyce Lee Malcolm of the Wall Street Journal.
“The conclusions of these studies were ‘all over the place,’ says [Samara McPhedran, a University of Sydney academic]. But by pulling back and looking purely at the statistics, the answer ‘is there in black and white,’ she says. ‘The hypothesis that the removal of a large number of firearms owned by civilians [would lead to fewer gun-related deaths] is not borne out by the evidence.’”
Quote by Samara McPhedran, a University of Sydney academic.
Stop buying the Hoffington Post and the NY Times slant as dogma, hardly being advocates of unbiased views on “Gun Control” like most of the rest of the liberal media.
They are all in on the Presidents Gun Grab agenda.
posted by: sanecitizen | February 13, 2013 3:55pm
@sofaman
The facts contradict your reasoning. Your basic premise is the greater good would be served by restricting guns, yet Australia and the UK saw violent crime explosions when firearms were restricted. Ignoring the UK for now(which despite draconian laws still had a mass shooting in Cumbria, leads the EU in violent crime and is more dangerous per capita than Somalia) violent crime across most indices in Australia increased significantly during the time of restricted guns.
Just be honest with people and speak the plain truth: You’re advocating explosive rates of assault, rape and robbery in exchange for lowering rates of mass killings, for which the statistical significance of lives lost is dwarfed by the simple hammer.
posted by: Reasonable | February 14, 2013 11:37am
Richard Blumenthal is a good actor. He performs well, theatrically—but no congressionally. We elected him for Democratic non-existent prosperity—and are paying the price—while Sen. Blumenthal keeps acting us to oblivion,
posted by: borisvian | February 14, 2013 1:10pm
In urban areas, only unstable, irrational people want to have guns, and that’s just one side of the problem. The other is, the presence of guns (i.e.: killing machines). Now, put unstable, irrational people on guns and there could be only disaster coming.
Simple fact, without guns there’re no mass killings. Countries without guns have no mass killings. Guns do kill people, much the same as drugs.
In the US, the country of no living wages-affordable education-healthcare, we have plenty of guns and Jesus and murdered people instead. And, yes, a booming arms industry.
If simply having guns would be the answer for “bad guys” with guns, how come the Indians were not able to protect their land? They had guns. Apparently then, you not only have to have guns but you have to match the guns of the intruders.
And the recent killing of Chris Kyle in Texas, at a shooting range, where guns and shooters are plenty, shows that unless the intruder is kind enough to let you get your guns ready to fire, you better keep a loaded gun in your hand all the time.
posted by: lisalake | February 17, 2013 7:04am
This anti-gun-confiscation-Constitutional attack agenda is evil, and Sandy Hook is leading the way. The disgusting display of fund raising, preferential town specific public hearing, trips, awards, bussed in rallies, green ribbon wearing congress
members, memorials, teddy bears, promises, valentines, Washington puppets… and on and on… American citizens attacking their fellow Americans and lobbying to disarm their neighbors. I’ll not be silenced. Know this, many will not say it, for fear of being “insensitive”, but there are so many who agree…
To Chien DeBerger—great comments.
posted by: Chien DeBerger | February 17, 2013 5:19pm
borisvian states “Simple fact, without guns there’re no mass killings. Countries without guns have no mass killings”
REALLY??!! How many guns were used by Timothy McVey in Oklahoma City? He scored 153 with fertilizer and heating oil. Please don’t be stupid.