[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Today at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) pressed Judge Barrett on her dissenting opinion in favor of allowing a felon to possess a firearm, and shared stories from people across Connecticut who have been impacted by gun violence. In her dissenting opinion in the 2019 gun-rights case Kanter v. Barr, Judge Barrett ruled that a conviction for a nonviolent felony should not automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun, despite federal and state laws stating the contrary.

“[T]hat decision seems to usurp the legislature's role in deciding who should be permitted to have firearms and who should not, because you decided the legislature was wrong to classify felons as not deserving of firearms,” said Blumenthal. “You decided as a matter of policy that when they were not dangerous, they should have that right. That's a policy or legislative judgment, and I think it has huge ramifications for real people across the country.”

Blumenthal shared the stories of a number of Connecticut residents impacted by gun violence, including:

Natalie Barden, who was ten-years-old when her seven-year-old brother Daniel was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012;

Kristin and Michael Song, whose fifteen-year-old son Ethan was killed by an unsecured firearm at a friend’s house; and

Janet Rice, whose only child Shane was shot and killed in Hartford, Connecticut, when he was twenty-years-old.

Blumenthal also shared the story of Vic Bencomo, a Colorado veteran who served in Iraq, and whose service member friend attempted suicide due to the toll of PTSD and mental illness. Vic has since become an advocate for extreme risk protection order laws, which give law enforcement the tools to keep guns out of the hands of people who are an imminent danger to themselves or others, and have been implemented in a number of states across the country. Blumenthal emphasized that with Barrett’s nomination, these laws are at risk.

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