Crime & Safety

State Police Want $2.6 Million to Deal With Connecticut Gun Law Requirements

Since the shootings in Newtown state police have been swamped with applications for background checks on new pistol permits.

Connecticut State Police want to hire 39 new staffers to respond to requirements under the state's new gun laws, including processing a huge backlog of gun permit checks that have come through since the shootings in Newtown in December. 

Under the state police's proposal the new hires would cost $2.6 million, according to a report today in the Stamford Advocate. 

Most of the $1.9 million in wages and $700,000 in fringe benefits would be for workers who are needed to process background checks, gun registries and permits established under the gun laws passed by the Connecticut legislature earlier this year, the newspaper reports.

The positions include office assistants, processing technicians, analysts and identification technicians.

"It's a substantial amount of work that needs to be entered into the system," Lt. J. Paul Vance, the state police spokesman, told the Advocate. 

State police are grappling with a backlog of some 62,000 gun permit background checks that has resulted from a surge in gun sales in the wake of the Newtown shootings in December that killed 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  

Background check requests have increased some 6,000 percent since the Dec. 14 shootings, from 1,000 in December to the current of about 62,000. 


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