US DOJ opens investigation into gun permitting in Middletown, Waterbury

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that it has opened an investigation into the firearms permitting process in two Connecticut cities.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announced via a press release that it is investigating Waterbury and Middletown over the two municipalities’ “policies and practices” for issuing firearms permits.

In certified letters sent to the mayors and police chiefs in the two cities, the DOJ explained that it intends to investigate whether local authorities are “unnecessarily” delaying or denying gun permits.

It unclear from the release why the DOJ is singling out Waterbury and Middletown or whether this is part of a larger push by the Civil Rights Division to investigate local firearms permitting in other parts of the country.

The investigation into firearms permitting in Connecticut comes at a time when the Trump administration is busy changing some of the traditional missions of the DOJ’s civil rights division.

That office, which was created in 1956 amid the Civil Rights Movement, historically handled cases involving things like voting rights, housing discrimination, police misconduct and the civil rights of prisoners.

The press release from the DOJ said the investigation into Waterbury and Middletown is focused on upholding people’s 2nd Amendment rights.

“All law-abiding Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms for self‑defense,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “This right is not a luxury reserved for a privileged few, but a fundamental liberty for all, including the residents of Middletown and Waterbury, Connecticut.”

The Connecticut Mirror contacted local officials in Waterbury and Middletown for this story, as well as the Connecticut Attorney General’s office, which has defended the state’s gun control laws in court in recent years.

Through a spokesperson, Attorney General William Tong said his office would defer to local officials for comment.

A spokesperson for Middletown’s Democratic Mayor Gene Nocera did not immediately respond to a phone call.

Waterbury’s Democratic Mayor Paul Pernerewski issued a statement saying his city would be cooperate with the DOJ investigation.

“Mayor Pernerewski is aware of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation and has received notification of the matter,” the statement reads. “The city takes its responsibilities seriously and expects to fully cooperate with the Department of Justice throughout the investigation. As this is an ongoing matter, we will have no further comment at this time.”

Connecticut has some of the strictest firearm permitting laws in the country, and those laws were tightened after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

To obtain a pistol permit in Connecticut, applicants must first apply for a local pistol permit, which can be obtained from a town or city police department. Only after that step can people apply for a state pistol permit.

It’s not immediately clear how many firearms permit applications Waterbury or Middletown have handled in recent years, or whether their processing times vary significantly from other municipalities in Connecticut.

In the letters sent to officials in Waterbury and Middletown, DOJ officials wrote that they had “not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of this investigation.”

“We will notify you upon completion of our investigation. If we conclude that there is no pattern or practice of violating federal constitutional or statutory rights … we will notify you and close the investigation,” the letters said.