2021 Legislative Session
In 2021 CAGV picked up where it left off: strengthening the state’s Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) and getting the state to establish an Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Substantive progress was made on both fronts, though much remains to be done to address the public health crisis of street violence in Connecticut’s urban centers.
Extreme Risk Protection Orders
The General Assembly passed, and Gov. Lamont signed, HB-6355, An Act Concerning Risk Protection Orders. The House voted 93-55-3, with two Republicans joining all but four Democrats in voting for the bill. In the Senate, the bill passed on a straight party-line vote, 23-12-1.
ERPOs provide a mea`ns of last resort for removing firearms from individuals judged by a court to be at risk of imminent harm to themselves or others. ERPOs have been particularly successful at preventing firearm suicide and strong circumstantial evidence exists that they prevent mass shootings. The key provisions of Public Act 21-67 include:
- Requiring a court hearing to demonstrate that the risk of imminent violence no longer exists before firearms are returned.
- Prohibiting an individual at risk of imminent harm from purchasing a firearm even if the individual doesn’t currently possess a firearm.
- Allowing family, household members, intimate partners and healthcare professionals to directly petition the court for a risk protection order.
Connecticut is the first state to require a court hearing before returning firearms, continuing our legacy of leadership; we were the first in the nation to create an ERPO, more than 25 years ago. Additional details can be found in our Legislative FAQ.
Office of Gun Violence Prevention
CAGV and its supporters continued to push the Lamont administration and the General Assembly to establish a state-level grant-making authority (an Office of Gun Violence Prevention) tasked with funding and implementing evidence-based, community-centric prevention and intervention programs to reduce street-level gun violence. We call this the Connecticut Initiative to Prevent Community Gun Violence.
Since CAGV launched the CT Initiative in the summer of 2020, there has been widespread and substantial support for getting the state to take a more intentional effort to address community gun violence. As of August, 2021, 40 organizations have signed on as partners to the CT Initiative, 69 currently seated legislators pledged to support it and some 1,150 citizens have sent Gov. Lamont and state legislators more than 3,000 emails and postcards urging them to take action.
Although the goal of creating an Office of Gun Violence Prevention was not achieved, notable progress was made. In the landmark Senate Bill 1, which declares racism a public health crisis, the legislature created an external committee to advise it on establishing a Commission on Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention “to coordinate the funding and implementation of evidence-based, community-centric programs and strategies to reduce street-level gun violence in the state” (we were pleased to see our wording in the CT Initiative borrowed verbatim). CAGV is named to the advisory committee. SB-1 passed on a bipartisan basis, 114-33-4 in the House and 30-5-1 in the Senate.
CAGV held multiple discussions with the Lamont administration and Office of Policy Management about meeting the goals of the CT Initiative through executive action. These discussions are ongoing.
Other Measures to Reduce Community Gun Violence
CAGV and its supporters joined efforts with our allies to advocate for two bills that will improve the state’s ability to prevent community gun violence. HB-5677, An Act Concerning Community Gun Violence Services Under Medicaid, makes Connecticut the first state in the nation to provide Medicaid reimbursement for Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program (HVIP) services. HVIP counsels gunshot injury victims during and after hospital stays to short-circuit acts of retaliatory violence, and provide victims with the after-care they need. The bill passed both the House and Senate without a single “no” vote!
HB-6034, An Act Concerning Project Longevity, also passed without a single “nay.” This bill, for which CAGV organized a strong turnout of supporters to testify at the public hearing, extends Project Longevity to Waterbury, which experienced a 6x increase in gun homicide in 2020. Project Longevity is the group-violence intervention (GVI) strategy that engages with the small number of individuals in urban communities who account for a majority of gun violence, either as perpetrators or victims. The program model brings all levels of law enforcement (local, state and federal) together with social service providers and community leaders to warn participants that all members of their group will be held accountable for future gun violence, but also to provide the supports such as job training, employment, housing and healthcare needed to turn away from violence.
2020 Legislative Session
CAGV headed into the 2020 legislative session with two priorities: preventing gun suicide, which accounts for a majority of Connecticut gun deaths, and pursuing non-legislative means to reduce community gun violence, which accounts for the majority of gun homicide in the state, and is concentrated in our largest cities.
HB-5448, An Act Concerning a Risk Protection Order, was raised in the Judiciary Committee to strengthen our Extreme Risk Protection Order law (passed in 1999, the first state in the country to do so). ERPOs are a means of last resort for removing guns from individuals who are at risk of imminent harm to themselves or others. The bill included reforms to add further protections against suicide and homicide by high-risk gun owners. Learn more about HB-5448 here.
The legislative session was suspended in March due to the pandemic, so there was no further action on the bill.
To address street-level violence, CAGV proposed the CT Initiative to Prevent Community Gun Violence, calling on the state to establish a grant-making authority to fund community-based violence prevention programs. The initiative was announced in this op-ed.
With the legislature in recess, CAGV pivoted towards building momentum for the CT Initiative ahead of the 2021 legislative session. We received pledges from 115 candidates running for the CT General Assembly to support the CT Initiative if elected, and our supporters sent more than 1,000 emails to Gov. Lamont and legislators calling on them to make the CT Initiative a reality.
2019 Legislative Session
History was made in 2019 when we passed three bills in one session; something that had never been done before. Safe Storage (Home), Safe Storage (Vehicles) , and Ghost Guns were passed with strong bipartisan majorities. In fact, more legislators voted for Ethan’s Law (HB7218) than any gun bill in the state’s history. This was a huge win for Connecticut. Learn more from our 2019 Legislative Session Recap and see how your legislators voted on all three bills here.
2018 Legislative Session
On October 1, 2018 Connecticut’s ban on bump stocks took effect. Passed in response to the horrific mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, the worst in the nation’s history, Public Act No. 18-29 prohibits the sale, transfer or possession of any “rate of fire enhancement.”
Practically, this would prohibit individuals from converting semi-automatic rifles into the equivalent of machine guns, as the Las Vegas shooter did to kill 58 and injure more than 500. The ban requires all individuals in Connecticut to destroy or otherwise dispose of any bump stock or similar devices they possessed before October 1, 2018.
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