Connecticut Arms Permits? No Constitutional Reason!

Connecticut Arms Permits? No Constitutional Reason!

By Craig M. Szwed

Connecticut, the "Constitution State", has been my home since 1974. Two hundred years earlier, this part of the British Colonies was saddled with tyrannical government that kept depriving colonists of more and more of their human rights. As our Founders broke away from the British Empire, they wrote constitutions for the federal and state governments, to ensure that our own governmental entities, which they had created, should always abide by the precepts and language in those constitutions, especially when our human rights were concerned. Our new governments, that comprised these United States of America, were supposed to be the servant of the people, and the people were supposed to keep track of what government was doing, to make sure that our rights were not infringed and that government did not get too big for its pants. (Somebody obviously messed up!)

In many respects, I really like living here in Connecticut. However, I find it bitterly ironic, and hypocritical, that our state moniker (the "Constitution State") and our Constitution both stand for Rights and Principles, yet those Rights and Principles are continually opposed and infringed upon by all the branches of our State Government, as well as by the Federal government. The ongoing attacks against Connecticut's Constitution have been especially vigorous in the form of the government's violations and infringements upon our Right to bear arms. As one reads our Connecticut Constitution, it is plain to see that in order to be able to bear arms one must obviously have, hold, or own arms, or have ready and unobstructed access to them. In their governmental excesses, our Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches have all encroached on our Rights, accomplishing that by means of the enactment and defense of practices and laws that deny and defile the plain language of our Constitution. Directly and indirectly, those branches of government have repeatedly violated the freedom of our citizens, even though our Connecticut Constitution's Article First, Declaration of Rights, plainly states, in Section 15, that, "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state."

In the founding days of our State and Nation, arms were known to be any weapon with which one could defend one's self, irrespective of whether it were a firearm or not, and whether it were commonly available to civilians or the military, or not. Notice that defense of self is written in our Declaration of Rights, first, before the defense of State is mentioned. With the Rights of Self declared before the State, there can be no confusion about the intent that the Framers wanted individuals to freely bear arms as individuals. Our Constitution's clear language removes, and does not allow for, any arguments that would misapply Section 15 strictly to military or militia, or in any way infringe upon the Rights of individual citizens. The bottom line to Section 15 is that the individual citizen is NOT to be stripped of, nor denied, any portion or degree of the personal Right to bear arms. Furthermore, constitutionally speaking, NO need for approval to bear arms was stated in our Declaration of Rights, nor any certification of competence required, as the stated Right to Bear arms attached directly and inseparably to one's citizenship of this State. NO license or permit was stipulated in our State's Declaration of Rights, and, NO regulation of firearm type was stipulated therein, either. There was NO comparison requirement for the review or restriction of arms based on what civilians or the military owned or used. Based on our Connecticut Constitution, THAT SHOULD BE the end of the story. The established Principles and Rights to which our Constitution's signers agreed are what we should see in practice today: civilians had unrestricted ownership and use of whatever arms they could afford, as should be the case today. When our State and Nation were founded, civilian arms were often as good or better than what the military used, depending on what any given civilian could afford. But, today, instead of such responsible liberty, we see and feel the burden of our government's grievous violations of our Rights, including by means of magazine restrictions and firearm types. If rifling had been invented in the current anti-gun climate, I believe that rifling, too, would be banned, except for military applications, because of its improvements to accuracy and effective striking range.

Why are we, the citizens of Connecticut, continually infringed upon and burdened with increasingly restrictive anti-arms laws and practices, when our Constitution says that our citizens' Rights supersede the opinions, fears, and desires of government? Citizen Rights supersede the fears or ignorance of those who do not understand or care about constitutional Rights. Our Constitution's Declaration of Rights acknowledges our natural Rights as human beings and puts it into a social contract form that is supposed to guarantee for us our personal liberty and responsibility with regard to arms, setting citizen Rights before interests of the State. Our Constitution's standard, Section 15, is simple, yet it establishes that responsibly armed citizens shall exercise their Right and freedom without infringement. Connecticut's constitutional Declaration of Rights is NOT about establishing external government controls to shackle or limit responsible law-abiding citizens, nor was it written to deny us our free and responsible exercise of our Rights, but entirely the opposite. It was written to keep government off the backs and out of the lives of law-abiding citizens, whom our Founders assumed to be moral and reasonable parties in our society, parties who would not willingly to, nor foolishly, abuse their Right to Bear Arms.

As many of us may remember, from jobs that we have worked, fearful and ignorant managers often use 'blanket' controls or threats against their employees. They hope to scare all their people into submission, while the managers fail to deal directly with troublemakers. Government, likewise, often finds it easier to threaten everyone, instead of going after real criminals. Such weak-willed government seeks to manage crime by controlling all citizens via gestapo tactics of threats, confiscations, reprisals, and incarcerations. Criminals are already under such threats from government, so that is nothing new to the criminals. Such oppressive government tends to accomplish the opposite of its objectives, as was evident when the highly oppressive Soviet Union crumbled under its own weight decades ago. The harder the government pushed, the more that the people resisted.

The Soviets failed, and our own government does not learn from history. The latter continually increases its threats against law-abiding citizens; continually infringes upon citizens, because our government, fearing the public more than fearing God, is unwilling to punish criminal activity in a godly manner (such as speedy executions of convicted felons). Ignorant, self-pleasing officials fail to heed the warnings from informed parties, who try to educate officials about their failures. Those officials also fail to heed the social benefits of having a responsibly armed citizenry. Our government would rather target innocent civilians than execute violent criminals. And, for some strange reason way too many law-abiding citizens tend to 'go with the flow' of whatever nonsense the government tells us. Our government continues to violate and infringe upon our Rights and our persons, and THAT must STOP! All citizens of this state need to resist any further infringements against our constitutional Rights. We must demand the repeal of all laws that are contrary to the plain language of Connecticut's Constitution, including everything that violates and infringes on Article First, Section 15.

Many law-abiding citizens are afraid of public opinion, or government reprisals. But, despite that fear, there is strong evidence that MOST citizens of Connecticut do NOT want gun laws that say anything more than what our Constitution says. Even this December 2014 Public Broadcasting System poll shows that to be true!

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/poll-support-connecticut-gun-law-state/

Take that poll and look up the results: Connecticut citizens overwhelmingly reject the idea of the State having any authority to infringe on our constitutional Rights!  

Now, let's assume that we all have taken and read the results of that poll, and understand that almost everyone in Connecticut doesn't want a bunch of firearms laws on the books! Great! Now, what is each one of us going to do about getting rid of all those bad laws that exist in Connecticut? We need to put our thoughts and beliefs into practice immediately, today, and every day, working to purge our state of the legislative, judicial, and executive corruption of our Constitution!

We, Connecticut citizens, MUST get busy, in practical ways, to force our government to abide by our Constitution. We can NO LONGER keep allowing our Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches to strip us of our constitutional and natural Rights. We MUST fight for our Constitution, or else we shall only pay lip service to it. Are we going to live like hypocrites, as does our government? They pledge themselves to our Constitution, to look good, then they look for and find ways to violate it. Instead of honoring the language of our Constitution they look for loopholes. Instead honoring our Rights, we let them hand us a Permit to Carry. 

How can we, the citizens of our state, tolerate the State Government telling us what it will or will not allow when our Constitution has already plainly said that we have that Right to bear arms. Rights are self-governed by responsible citizens. They are, by definition, a law unto themselves, needing no other law of elaboration or control, for we, who are responsible arms owners are self-governing. It is only when people break the Law of God and of our Constitution that they have shown themselves unworthy as citizens and thereby lose their Rights as citizens. Until such time as a citizen is convicted of crimes and stripped of constitutional rights, he/she is considered innocent and retains said rights. It is, therefore, UNCONSTITUTIONAL for any branch of this state's government to infringe in any way upon the Constitution or the Rights of any citizen, including with regard to our Right to bear arms.

Let us all work, therefore, to overcome the decades of fear, ignorance, and legal improprieties that have violated the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, and infringed upon the Rights of the citizens of this State. Honor the language of our Constitution, and repeal the junk. God bless you to do right in His eyes and according to His Word. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)