CT Rep: Make Handgun Owner Records Public - My Response

Dear Mr. Megna,

As one of your constituents of the 97th Assembly District, I am writing you to express my deep concern with Rep. Dargan's proposal to make records of registered handgun owners publicly available. To begin, I am not a handgun owner, which makes this legislation especially disturbing to me. I am also new to the New Haven area, having recently moved from Rhode Island where I was registered as an unaffiliated voter. I oppose Rep. Dargan's initiative for several reasons, the most important of which I will briefly mention.

The proposal is ludicrous; it serves no functional purpose, while providing a database that would be accessible to virtually anyone, including convicts, sexual predators, would-be criminals, burglars, or any other crook who can access public records either directly or by proxy. As you know, the 97th District is a quiet and peaceful neighborhood where any number of law-abiding citizens may (or may not!) keep handguns in their homes for personal defense. It is a relatively affluent District, where homes have recently sold for as much as $1,000,000. Yet, it is approximately three miles away from New Haven proper, which ranked #13 on Business Insider's Top 25 Most Dangerous Cities in the U.S. 2012 (see the link below).

As a law abiding citizen, I have no need to know which of my neighbors own guns for self defense, because I do not plan on robbing or otherwise harming them. Since I do not own a handgun myself, potential criminal opportunists living only miles away would be able to safely and easily choose soft targets around the state, and particularly within our affluent District nearby. Please consider that just west of our neighborhood, less than three miles away, is one of the most criminally violent cities in the Nation. I hope you have already considered that the unarmed residents of this District will be effectively outed to criminals who live just up the road. This legislation will bring crime upon our peaceful neighborhood - your peaceful neighborhood. And it will not reduce the number of guns in this state - it will increase it, as peaceful families arm themselves so they do not make Rep. Dargan's proposed soft target list.

And the argument for this legislation? "People have a right to know if their neighbors are armed." Do people have the right to know if their neighbors are Muslims? Homosexuals? Hispanics? Whites? Owners of expensive foreign made vehicles? Military members? Law enforcement officers? Environmentalists? The answer to all these questions is clearly NO, people do not have that right. And they don't have the right to know if I am choosing to exercise my lawfully protected right to defend my family with a firearm, either. I hope you will vehemently denounce this legislation and encourage your colleagues to do the same.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-25-most-dangerous-cities-...

http://www.inquisitr.com/468827/connecticut-lawmaker-wants-t...