Thursday, February 10, 2011

OFF TOPIC - CT - Looney Proposes Gun Offender Registry


Thursday, February 10, 2011


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Original Article

Like I've said many times, if a registry is okay for one group, then it should be done for all criminals, and all on one registry. Each new registry proposed, wastes tons of money, and if they put all criminals on one registry, it would save a ton of money.

02/10/2011

By Christine Stuart

After a year when 22 New Haveners were shot to death, State Sen. Martin Looney Thursday put forward a made-in-New Haven proposal to set up a Connecticut gun offender registry to keep track of crooks with itchy fingers.

The New Haven proposal is inspired in part by a similar Baltimore law that, in its first year, succeeded in seeing only three of 200 jail-sprung registrants get rearrested.

Accompanied by New Haven Police Detective Richard Pelletier and other city constituents, Looney presented his proposal to the state legislature’s Public Safety Committee.

His proposal would have the state public safety commissioner keep a registry of people convicted of gun crimes, with a database (available to law enforcement, but not the general public) containing information on offenders from the past four years; have registrant check in annually with local cops and report changes of address; and make it a crime to fail to register.
- Why is it not available to everyone?  I'd like to know who they are, so I can "protect" myself, and why are they only on it for 4 years and not life?

The concept is similar to the state’s sex offender registry, except for the fact that it restricts information to law enforcement, Looney told the committee Thursday.

He said that the idea was suggested to him by New Haven Police Chief Frank Limon.

Looney agreed to put forth the legislation, which didn’t receive any opposition publicly Thursday, because of the 22 homicides with a firearm in New Haven last year, almost double the amount from 2009.
- Even if, like I said above, you put all criminals on a registry, it's not going to do anything to prevent crime, but it will suck a ton of money from the tax payers, while doing nothing.

There were also 116 non-fatal shootings in New Haven last year.

“Keep in mind this is a city of only 123,000 residents. The total of 138 deadly and non-deadly shootings in New Haven last year was around 1 per 900 New Haven residents,” said Looney, the State Senate majority leader.

Viewed this way it means New Haven has more than two and half times as many shootings per capita than Boston, which has a population almost five times larger than New Haven’s.

Currently there are five gun offender registries in cities throughout the country and many require registration for three or four year periods of time, unlike sex offender registries which require at least 10 years of registration.

Looney said this 2010 recidivism report published by the Office of Policy and Management found that those convicted of gun crimes are more likely to be rearrested. It’s something Detective Pelletier sees all too often.
- I'd like to see the actual facts and study.  I am willing to bet, like the lies about sex offenders, it's all made up hysteria. Next they will be eradicating your right to bear arms, to "protect the children!"

Pelletier told the committee he’s been in law enforcement for 23 years and most of the time when he interviews subjects arrested with firearms they tell him they have the gun to protect themselves.

He urged the committee to pass the legislation and give law enforcement one more tool to help stop gun violence.

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"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
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“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.

But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?

All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
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What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
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“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”