Four months after the shooting rampage in Newtown, the Connecticut state Senate on Wednesday signed off on what lawmakers touted as the strictest gun control package of any state in the nation after a day-long debate stretched into early evening.
The House was expected to later pass the bill and send it to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
The legislation, passed on a 26-10 vote, would break new ground by creating a dangerous weapons offender registry to track those convicted of gun crimes, and it bans the sale of new high-capacity ammunition magazines, and requires gun owners to register with the state any high-capacity magazines they already own.
It also strengthens the state's existing ban on military-style, semiautomatic rifles by adding more than 100 additional models to the list, and it immediately requires universal background checks on all gun sales, including private sales and those at gun shows.
"The tragedy in Newtown demands a powerful response," Senate President Donald E. Williams, Jr., Brooklyn Democrat, said Wednesday. "It deserves a response that transcends politics."
The legislation also provides $15 million for school safety infrastructure, among other school safety and mental health provisions.
Mr. Williams said that every day in America, children are killed in cities, "without the attendant publicity" of Newtown, or other mass shootings like Virginia Tech in 2007, when gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people before killing himself or Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed and about 60 wounded last July at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises."
Twenty children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14.
Both gun rights and gun control advocates descended on the state Capitol in Hartford Wednesday to express their support of — or opposition to — the new restrictions.
Toward the start of the debate that went on for approximately six hours, Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, New Haven Democrat, prompted murmurs from the audience when he said there was nothing in the bill that would infringe upon peoples' Second Amendment rights.
Sen. Anthony Guglielmo, Stafford Republican, said he couldn't "connect the dots" between gunman Adam Lanza and ordinary, law-abiding citizens.
"You're punishing the wrong people. It's that simple," he said. "The premise is just wrong."
Mr. Guglielmo also said that 5,000 jobs are connected directly or indirectly with the firearms industry in Connecticut, and said businesses threatening to leave or potential boycotts of Connecticut gun products as a result of the legislation would hammer the state's economy.
"You never want to trade money for blood, but there is an economic component and I think if you don't mention it, it's avoiding part of the equation," he said.
"I understand we have to do something," he continued, offering, for example, mandatory minimum sentences for straw purchasers. "So basically, I guess, the problem is I can't connect the dots between Adam Lanza and the good guys. So I think we need to do something, but I [just] wish we would do something that does good, not something that just feels good."
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