Slain Officers Faced Daunting Firepower Despite Connecticut’s Strict Gun Laws
The killing of five police officers in Connecticut last week was the worst massacre in the state’s history, and it also served as a warning that the strict gun laws that Gov. Dannel Malloy has championed can be a double-edged sword.
But a new analysis by Mother Jones shows that the state’s gun laws were effective in preventing last week’s massacre, and they still might have saved other lives.
After last weekend’s massacre in Connecticut, police had to get creative as they struggled to control the city of Newtown, with heavily armed gangs using increasingly deadly weapons. The city was in the grips of an already intense gun-control debate. As a result, police would have to use the kind of weaponry that had failed so many times in other American cities, particularly during the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre shooting.
Police used a range of weapons and tactics, from pepper spray to shotguns to armored personnel carriers, to try to protect themselves and to stop the bloodshed. But ultimately, their most powerful weapon — their guns — was not nearly enough.
“Law enforcement officers in the state of Connecticut are well positioned to respond to this tragic and senseless tragedy,” Malloy said in a statement after the shooting. “There is no doubt that the state has the resources to protect its citizens.”
“The fact that we have the number of trained officers to respond to this type of tragedy is pretty impressive,” said Richard A. Serrano, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s really remarkable how well the state’s law enforcement has prepared for it.”
“We’ve seen it before,” Serrano said. “There are a number of places, like the Boston Marathon bombing and the Aurora movie theatre shooting where the police responded well. There were no police or other emergency response resources there at the end