State Democrats used a bucolic backdrop-- New Haven's Botanical Garden of Healing-- to criticize Republican nominee for governor Bob Stefanowski on gun control. They appeared with women whose children were shot to death. Stefanowski responded, accusing Gov. Ned Lamont of "exploiting survivors of horrible gun violence."
Stefanowski says Connecticut's strong gun laws, adopted after the 2012 attack on the Sandy Hook School, should remain in place. Democrats consider that support suspect.
"How can one get an 'A' rating from the NRA four years ago," asks New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, "and now is saying, 'Let's support the status quo'? I question... that dramatic change in their positions, and whether once they get into office they're really going to stick to what they're saying now."
Joining the mayor, CT Against Gun Violence Executive Director Jeremy Stein says Stefanowski has repeatedly proclaimed that the Sandy Hook laws went too far.
"Connecticut has the strongest gun laws in the entire country and that's the way they should stay," says Stefanowski. "But I will also use my platform as Governor to urge federal action in Congress on comprehensive solutions that protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners... It's time to put politics aside and start working together for a safer country and state."
Marlene Miller Pratt, the leader of the group of women who led the botanical garden project to completion, appeared with the assembled Democrats to back their message. Her son, Gary Kyshon Miller, was shot and killed in 1998. He was 20.
"He was innocently shot in the back for visiting a young lady in a neighborhood where he was told that he couldn't be," says Miller Pratt.
Miller Pratt has worked since then to keep other families from suffering the same fate. She says the garden represents that effort by permanently displaying the names of hundreds of victims, etched in bricks laid on its walkway. She wants those inclined to violence to understand shootings are not a video game: they take real lives.
"They have to be aware," says Miller Pratt. "The purpose of the garden was to bring awareness to them. The young people are committing these crimes, and they're killing, and they're going to the vigils and they're going to the funerals. Then, after three or four weeks, they forget about that person, and then there's another crime."
Friday morning, Mayor Elicker attended a wake for New Haven's eighth homicide victim of 2022, Michael Judkins, who was 26 years old.
