The Connecticut State Constitution plainly says that the armed rights of Connecticut citizens come before any advancement of State authority (in or from any branch of CT government). Without equivocation or qualification, our Federal Constitution literally says in the Second Amendment, that the rights of all citizens to keep and to bear arms "shall not be infringed", for it is the common citizens who make up the real militia of our States and Nation, for it is only the several individual citizens agreeing to act in consort that are the militia that is capable of defending the citizens and Constitutions of our States and Nation. Apart from the power of each several individual citizen, our States and Nation that were established by those several individual citizens has neither authority nor power, except as granted to those artificial entities by the citizens of each, whether State or Federal.
Our State and Federal Constitutions were written to be literally understood and literally obeyed, even as all the authorized representatives of every several State have had to agree to and subscribe their respective signatures to the Constitutions of the several States and of our Federal Constitution, respectively.
In our most recent history of the USA, there have been more than 100 years of anti-arms legislation and enforcement, throughout the USA. However, despite all aspirations of that legislation, the problem of human violence has NOT been quenched nor staunched by the hundreds or thousands of anti-gun laws. That failure of laws to control human violence is because the problem of human violence does not stem from firearms, BUT, that violence is rooted in the weakness of human choices, whereby, those who desire to do evil choose to act selfishly, hatefully, and violently against others in society. Look at all the interpersonal violence in societies and cultures that have the most restrictive anti-gun laws: they have NOT erased nor eliminated their propensity for hostility and violence toward one another. That tendence to violence continues on the part of perpetrator who choose to act violently, and because they do NOT desire to restrain themselves. They choose to act without legal or moral restraint. President John Adams stated that our Federal Constitution would not contain an immoral or irreligious people. Why would he say that? because immoral and hateful people have no regard for law of any kind, except what is convenient to their own interests. As God says in the Bible (Romans 13:1-4). and Jesus Christ said that people love the darkness of sin, rather than the Light of God's Truth (John 3:16-21), because their own deeds are evil.
From the beginning, history has repeatedly proven that there is no law that prevents people from choosing to sin or commit violent acts, because the commission of violent acts has always been and shall continue to always be a matter of personal choice: law only exposes that which is already happening or that which society fears and wants to not allow to happen without consequences; but, law exists to set consequences and punishments for sin and violence perpetrated by one soul against another: law acknowledges evil and can punish evil, but, law cannot control the hearts, minds, spirits, and actions of anyone who refuses to agree to or abide by external Standards, external governance, or what is ultimately determined to be right or wrong, whether by worldly benchmarks or by God's eternal Standard. By definition, A law breaker has chosen to disregard and break any law that was broken, whether humanistic secular law or godly moral law: one is a criminal for committing crime, not for failing to commit crime. The State too often makes law-abiding citizens into victims of the violent, when the State refuses to allow citizens to defend and protect all that is within the citizens' God-given natural rights to use weapons of the citizens' own choice.
According to online research that I did, over a decade ago, at that time, FBI records indicated that 75% or more of violent crimes and deaths, against persons, was NOT historically being committed with firearms of any kind, but, that 75% or more was committed by the aggressors' body parts and the aggressors' use of other weapons that had nothing to do with firearms of any kind.
Those who think to control human violence by executive mandates, or legislation, against the natural law rights and actions of law-abiding citizens, those in earthly power are deceiving themselves and looking in the wrong direction: the REAL effect of gun control versus constitutional Second Amendment empowerment of law-abiding citizens was scientifically proven by the Mustard & Lott research at the University of Chicago School of Economics: I list that source, here: https://chicagounbound.
The Mustard and Lott study was an excellent longitudinal and cross-sectional study: it bears repeating for the sake of further evidence of the lack of legislative and executive effect on patterns of human violence, and further evidence of the ineffective nature of anti-gun laws. That University of Chicago School of Economics Study was scientifically controlled in all its parameters and constraints. Anyone who is seeking to honestly and intelligently discuss the issue of firearm use and control cannot do so without having read this study and/or John Lott's, later, resulting book, "More Guns, Less Crime". As a citizen of these United States of America and the State of Connecticut, I do NOT want those in government working as knee-jerk emotionally driven populists, but as accountable, rational, and deliberative servants and defenders of our Federal and State Constitutions, so that we are all working and living in and by common rules and common legal language in our society, for all our laws are supposed to be based on our respective State and Federal Constitutions. We are not supposed to be altering our Constitutions in order to satisfy populist fears or lusts. We the People are supposed to be the power in and behind the Nation and respective State in which we live.
Criminals do not have any regard for our laws or Constitutions, only for those things by which they can advance their own agendas. Law abiding citizens were given our State and Federal Constitutions that we each might literally walk according to said Constitutions, whether we are the citizen who is voting or the citizen who is in public office in government: we all are subject to the same rule of natural, spiritual, and earthly law.
I urge legislators everywhere across our Nation to work to return our States and our Nation to Federal Constitutional Carry of all arms, by law abiding citizens... And that we all must deal with violent criminals as criminals, instead of trying to limit and punish law-abiding citizen for the evil intents and actions of those who have no regard for the laws of man or of God.
If you have not already made eternal peace with God in accord with how He says He has been calling out to you, then, I invite you to see how God wants to save you from your own sin and help you to grow in His Light and purpose. God bless you to seek Him, "while it is yet day": "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear...".
