Supreme Court finds loophole in state gun law: Some out-of-state drug offenders can obtain Connecticut handgun permits - Hartford Courant

The state Supreme Court has ruled that an out-of-state drug conviction can’t prevent someone from obtaining a pistol permit in Connecticut.

The court released the decision Wednesday in the case of a Stratford man who had been denied a permit based on a misdemeanor drug conviction years earlier in New York.

Had the applicant for the permit been convicted of a similar, non-felony crime in Connecticut, the permit would have been denied under state law establishing fitness requirements for gun owners. But the court said that because the General Assembly did not include convictions for equivalent, out-of-state crimes as disqualifiers for obtaining permits, the pistol permit application was wrongly denied.

Legislators were talking about plugging the apparent loophole in the law hours after the court published the decision.

“My initial quick browse through this suggests there is an oversight in the statute,” said state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Bridgeport Democrat and co-chairman of the General Assembly’s judiciary committee. “We need to make it clear that the local police chief has the authority to deny the permit based on a conviction under Connecticut law or a comparable provision of another state’s law.”

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Andrew J. McDonald, the court said that the legislature enacted a law with about dozen factors disqualifying an applicant from gun ownership. Since a misdemeanor drug conviction in another state is not among them, the court said it must conclude lawmakers did not intend for it to be a bar to gun ownership.

“In light of the fact that the legislature has previously used explicit language in other Connecticut statutes to incorporate equivalent out-of-state convictions, we conclude that the absence of such language … indicates that the legislature intended only for the enumerated Connecticut offenses to operate as a … bar to obtaining a state pistol permit,” the court said.

“We cannot say with certainty why the legislature chose not to include an equivalency provision in that statute, but what we can say with certainty is that the policy decision to incorporate such an equivalency provision rests with that branch of government, not this one.”

The court based the decision on a state law requiring that laws be interpreted on the plain meaning of the text. The court effectively told the legislature that if it wants out-of-state, non-felony convictions to block the issuance of permits, it must write laws that say so explicitly. Out-of-state felony convictions already are a bar to permitting under the law.

Anthony Leo of Stratford applied to the local police department for a handgun permit about six years ago. The Stratford Police Department denied the application based on his conviction 10 years before that in New York for illegal possession of ketamine, an anesthetic and anti-depressant that is often abused.

The police department said that although the New York crime was not a specific bar to handgun licensing in Connecticut, it was the equivalent of a Connecticut offense that is.

Leo appealed to the state Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, which reversed the police department and granted the permit. The Stratford police appealed to the Superior Court, which reversed again, denying the permit on the grounds that the New York crime was the equivalent of a Connecticut offense that is an automatic disqualifier under state law.

The Superior Court also criticized the firearms board for its failure to consider “factors” such as the danger posed by providing pistol permits to persons known to abuse controlled substances, and the way it distinguished between similar drug crimes in Connecticut and New York.

Leo appealed again and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case.

In ruling for Leo, the court said the legislature should have said specifically that out-of-state offenses equivalent to Connecticut crimes are disqualifying conduct, just as it has for the issuance of other sorts of licenses, including those for drivers, childcare providers and bail bondsmen.

source: https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-supreme-court-handgun-permit-loophole-20220420-20220420-y53xdly6hrcdxcucyvdb7ea6vu-story.html

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