Bills in CT (long)

Sorry it's so long, but this matters for folks up there, and we know it spreads...

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Judiciary Committee Public Hearing on March 11th Hartford CT, March 8, 2015: On March 11, 2015, with their typical obfuscation and lack of notice to the public, the Judiciary Committee plans to meet and have a public hearing on various bills related to our individual rights in Connecticut. Committee public hearings like this are one of the most important parts of the legislative process here in Connecticut. This is the one time when you will be able to make your opinions on proposed bills known face to face with legislators before the committee votes on it and either moves it forward, allows it die in committee, or refers to another committee. Details: Judiciary Committee Wednesday, March 11, 2015 10:30 AM in Room 2E of the Legislative Office Building (Directions) It should go without saying that everyone that can possibly make it to Hartford on Wednesday should show up and sign up to speak on the bills below. Instructions for how to testify at the legislature are readily available: http://ift.tt/1C0xWSV Regardless of whether or not you can make it in person, you must at least write testimony to make your voice heard. Writing testimony is not difficult. It is simply writing a short and informative letter about your support or opposition to a bill. The most important part of writing testimony is noting that you are writing public hearing testimony and the date of the public hearing, the committee hearing the public as well as simply listing the bills and your position on them. You can always see, read, borrow and steal other people’s written testimony on the Connecticut General Assembly’s website: http://ift.tt/1C0xXGA If you attend the public hearing, you should be prepared to submit 50 copies of your written testimony. If you cannot attend the public hearing, you should email written testimony in Word or PDF format to JUDtestimony@cga.ct.gov Remember, if you show up in person in Hartford for the public hearing, you should still be submitting written testimony as well. This is a physical manifestation of support or opposition for a bill and can easily be counted by the interns so that the legislators know how many people support or oppose their bills. Get information about the members of the Judiciary Committee, as well as a list of email addresses that can be pasted into your email client here: http://ift.tt/1C0xWSX The bills scheduled show a complete disregard to public safety as well as individual rights in favor of a collectivist agenda to remove firearms from every citizens’ hands. HB 6962 This bill removes pretty much all of the current exclusions from the current ‘Safe Storage’ law, which is actually made up of multiple statutes. Currently, the ‘Safe Storage’ law only mandates that a person with firearms keeps their firearms under lock and key when the firearm is not on their person and there is a minor that could access the firearm. Currently, if you don’t keep your firearms locked away from minor children, there are civil and criminal liabilities that apply to a minor accessing your unlocked firearm and causing harm. In other words, there has to actually be a victim in order for it to be a criminal. This bill removes the word ‘minor’ from those statutes, making it a requirement that everyone’s firearms be locked up when not on their person. It also expands your criminal and civil liability for someone accessing your firearms against your will. Even more disturbingly, the bill then goes on to change the burden of proof for a defendant during a risk warrant hearing. This changes the current ‘innocent until proven guilty’ system, which is already heavily perverted by the risk warrant law, and makes it clear that upon an accusation, you are guilty until proven innocent. So why should you be against this bill? This bill is trying to make law out of how the police and prosecutors have been trying to pervert the laws in this state for many years now. We have been fighting against these injustices, often on the grounds that they are not following the law. Now, the legislature appears to be willing to just change the law to make those perversions the law of the land. But how is it ok to tell people how they must store their private property behind the locked doors of their home? Do we also require people to lock up the keys to their cars and charge them criminally and civilly if someone steals their car and injures someone? Further, do we want to live in a land where police raid your home and take your property on an accusation, and then you are guilty until proven innocent? How can anyone even suggest such a perversion of our justice system with a straight face? SB 650 This is one of the main battleground ideas of the anti-rights collectivists currently. They are using the confusion of the difference between a Temporary Restraining Order and a Restraining Order that many people have and trying to make it sound like it would be a ‘common sense’ idea for someone to lose their firearms during a Temporary Restraining Order. The reality is that there is little that is similar about a TRO and an RO. A TRO is an ex parte order, meaning that only one side has presented anything to the court. In other words, the subject of the TRO has had no opportunity to be heard or represented. This clearly violates the concept and idea of Due Process, but further, it actually negatively impacts public safety as well. Consider the scenario that if you were angry at your spouse for leaving you for your domestic abuse, and they were armed and willing to defend themselves, all you have to do is file a TRO and the government will disarm your spouse for you leaving you to inflict violence on the now defenseless victim. Currently, that victim would have had the opportunity to correct the record on who is a threat to who during the 14 day hearing. With this bill in place, the victim is now defenseless for 14 days at one of the most critical times of a domestic dissolution. We have a lot of experience with this issue, unfortunately, because the Connecticut State Police were already implementing these actions in the forms of unlawful threats under color of law. Attorney Rachel Baird exposed this, causing the State Police to cease and desist in their unlawful behavior. Attorney Baird has written to the legislature on this very topic using her experience with the issue to try and educate the legislature. Read that letter here: http://ift.tt/1C0xWSZ HB 6848 Like SB 650, this bill attempts to make firearms confiscations only take a simple accusation by another person. They disguise it as something to help victims of ‘domestic violence’, even though it is more likely to get victims of domestic violence killed when the government disarms the victim based on a TRO filed by a malicious domestic abused bent on doing harm. The bill seeks to remove the current legal need for a 14 day hearing from the TRO process to confiscate firearms. It also demands that people surrender their firearms or have their firearms confiscated within 24 hours of notice of a TRO. Interestingly, this is what the State Police had been deceiving Connecticut residents into thinking was the law and threatening those people with arrest for many years now when it is not the law. This bill also seeks to remove the ability for a person impacted by a TRO to transfer to an FFL, and requires them to instead surrender their property to the state. Currently, people have the option to surrender their firearms to whoever they want, provided that they have an actual restraining order, not just a single party (temporary) restraining order. This leaves a person’s property to be left as leverage against the subject of the TRO. This is something that prosecutors and judges all over the state currently do to force people into pleas that they would not otherwise take. Once the firearms are taken by the state, people under a TRO would still be able to transfer those firearms to qualified people from the evidence room/vault. Except all the ‘Assault Weapons’ and ‘Large Capacity Magazines’, which cannot be transferred at all since the 2013 Gun Ban. Some legislators will try to claim this is not somehow taking away due process. Except the actual proposed bill specifically removes the phrase “and an opportunity to be heard” from the statutes impacted, which is currently one of the conditions imposed on the state before they can confiscate or demand the surrender of firearms from people under the impact of a restraining order. To add insult to injury, the legislature has proposed this bill with the deceptive title of “An Act Protecting Victims Of Domestic Violence” and then used a statement of purpose of “To implement the Governor's budget recommendations.". This bill is pretty sick and evil, and the legislature is clearly aware of this trying to deceive the public about it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are many people who are not going to get involved in this legislative session because they either don’t feel like they will have any influence on what happens or because they don’t think they can lose anything more than what they have already lost in the 2013 Gun Ban. That is very unfortunate however, because now is the time to fight back at every turn. You know the tides are changing when even Malloy issues a quote like this to the press: "There's just not a big appetite for even talking about guns at the moment in the state of Connecticut" – Dan Malloy to the Miami Herald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The official CGA announcement of this public hearing: JUDICIARY COMMITTEE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015 The Judiciary Committee will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 10:30 A.M. in Room 2E of the LOB. Public speaker order will be determined by a lottery system. Lottery numbers will be drawn from 8:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. in Room 2500 of the LOB. Speakers arriving after the completion of the lottery will have their names placed at the end of the speaker list. Please submit 50 copies of written testimony to Committee staff any day prior to the hearing but no later than 10:00 A.M. in Room 2500 of the LOB. Written testimony submitted by a person(s) or organization(s) which exceeds five (5) single-sided pages per bill or resolution will only be posted on the Judiciary Committee’s website at the discretion of the Judiciary Committee Chairs. Testimony received after the designated time may not be distributed until after the hearing. Please email written testimony in Word or PDF format to JUDtestimony@cga.ct.gov. Testimony should clearly state testifier name and related Bills. The Committee requests that testimony be limited to matters related to the items on the Agenda. The first hour of the hearing is reserved for Legislators, Constitutional Officers, State Agency Heads and Chief Elected Municipal Officials. Speakers will be limited to three minutes of testimony. The Committee encourages witnesses to submit a written statement and to condense oral testimony to a summary of that statement. Unofficial sign-up sheets have no standing with the Committee. All public hearing testimony, written and spoken, is public information. As such, it may be made available on the Judiciary Committee's website and indexed by internet search engines. SUBJECT MATTER: Family Court and Firearm Safety Proposed S.B. No. 650 AN ACT CONCERNING TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDERS. S.B. No. 1029 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING A NONADVERSARIAL DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. S.B. No. 1030 (RAISED) AN ACT IMPLEMENTING RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE TASK FORCE TO STUDY METHODS FOR IMPROVING THE COLLECTION OF PAST DUE CHILD SUPPORT. H.B. No. 5505 (COMM) AN ACT CONCERNING FAMILY COURT PROCEEDINGS. H.B. No. 6848 AN ACT PROTECTING VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. H.B. No. 6927 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE LAW REVISION COMMISSION WITH RESPECT TO ALIMONY STATUTES. H.B. No. 6929 (RAISED) AN ACT ESTABLISHING A PILOT PROGRAM IN THE CITY OF BRIDGEPORT TO ALLOW FOR THE SERVICE OF A CAPIAS MITTIMUS ORDER BY AN OFF-DUTY CITY POLICE OFFICER. H.B. No. 6962 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING FIREARM SAFETY. H.B. No. 6964 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING COURT CONSIDERATION OF THE RIGHTS OF A FAMILY UNIT IN ABUSE AND NEGLECT PROCEEDINGS.

Bills in CT (long)