Tom Foley of Greenwich, who came within 6,000 votes of defeating Dannel Malloy in the 2010 gubernatorial race, and Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, a former member of the state House of Representatives, were asked yesterday what they thought of the details of the historic gun-control legislation. The bipartisan deal was finalized by majority Democrats and potential primary opponents of Foley and Bouhgton for the 2014 GOP gubernatorial nomination, Senate Minority Leader John McKinney of Fairfield and House Minority Leader Larry Cafero.
Boughton: “I haven’t seen the actual language and haven’t been briefed like lawmakers today, but a compromise where everyone walks away a little unhappy, both gun advocates and gun-control supporters, is probably a good bill. There doesn’t seem to be any money for enforcement, but having said that, with everyone a little unhappy, I would support it.”
Foley was a little more opaque, it seems. “I thought the appropriate dialogue for a response would be to limit discussion to responses that would prevent events like Newtown in the future. It’s a tragedy to politicize this. ” He said the bill would not have changed the outcome. “Emphasis should have been on mental health” and what could have been done to prevent the shooting. When asked to list items in the bill that he disagrees with, Foley said “anything that is in there that would not have prevented” the Sandy Hook School slaughter. “They’re politicizing a tragedy.”