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Eight days before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) had offered a gun company a $1 million loan to move its headquarters from North Carolina to Stamford, according to the Hartford Courant.
Days after the shooting, the DECD withdrew the offer to Freedom Group for various reasons, the Courant reported. Freedom Group is a holding company for gun manufacturers, including the Bushmaster AR-15, the gun Adam Lanza had used in the Newtown shooting. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has also proposed banning the gun in the state.
Reporters at the Hartford Courant received the information through a Freedom of Information Act request.
And what’s wrong with trying to attract businesses to Connecticut? Firearms manufacturing is not illegal. Connecticut’s economy needs jobs.
The AR 15 has been used more times in the past year by legal owners to prevent violent crime that it has in mass shootings. It is no more lethal that rifles that have been used by the public for more than 100 years for hunting, target shooting and self-defense.
Proponents of the laws being proposed now say they are focused on reducing homicides and mass murders. According to FBI statistics, by far the largest source of homicides are urban gangs. Most mass murders in the last 20 years were known to have mental illnesses with violent potential and on SSRI medications that can cause aggressiveness, depression and suicide.
So it makes absolutely no sense for politicians like Gov. Malloy to propose laws that restrict and penalize law-abiding firearms owners who are not the problem.