Opinion: Connecticut’s gun laws work, and the numbers prove it
—
For years, we have been told that gun violence is simply the price of life in America, that the daily toll is a fact of nature and nothing can be done about it. Connecticut has spent more than a decade proving that is not true.
Consider what we are up against. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 327 people are shot in this country every day, and on average 117 of them die. Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens. As of 2022, the United States had 121 firearms for every 100 residents, the only nation on Earth with more civilian-owned firearms than people.
And still our national leaders offer thoughts and prayers where they owe us action. The debate never becomes a decision. Comprehensive solutions never come.
Connecticut refuses to live that way. Our laws work, and the numbers say so plainly.
Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, we have done the slow, deliberate work of writing law after law. Our prison population has fallen by about half, now the ninth lowest in the country, and our crime rate sits at its lowest point in more than 40 years. The Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection’s 2025 Crime in Connecticut Annual Report found that the number of crimes committed with a firearm decreased 21 percent compared to 2024.
Is any of that an accident? It is not. It is the result of common-sense gun laws paired with evidence-based criminal justice reform, built piece by piece.
We wrote the most far-reaching gun-control measure the state has passed since 2013. It banned open carry, expanded the assault weapons ban, and strengthened safe-storage requirements. We wrote a law to hold gun manufacturers accountable in civil court when they fail to take reasonable steps to keep their products out of the wrong hands, and we passed it over the objections of those who insisted it could not be done. We made it harder for people who have committed crimes in other states to walk into Connecticut and walk out with a gun permit.
This past session, after much debate and overcoming disagreement, we passed another gun-safety law tightening the rules on convertible pistols and similar firearms. It matters more than most people realize. Machine guns are already banned in Connecticut. Yet in 2023 and 2024 alone, Hartford police seized 51 Glocks that had been modified into automatic weapons. A law is only as good as our willingness to keep it current.
The results show up where people actually live. In New Haven, where local leaders pair these state laws with ShotSpotter, community outreach, and violence-prevention programs, homicides have fallen from seven at this point last year to two this year, the fewest the city has seen at the midway mark since at least 1988.
None of this is finished. This work is long, and it is often slow, the kind of progress measured over years and not headlines. But Connecticut’s lawmakers and advocates have been among the nation’s leaders on gun violence for a generation, and we do not intend to surrender that ground now. We will keep writing the laws. We will keep doing the work. The people we represent cannot afford for us to stop.
Susan Bysiewicz is the lieutenant governor of Connecticut. Gary Winfield is the state senator representing New Haven and West Haven and serves as Senate chair of the Judiciary Committee.
