While Connecticut lawmakers are still trying to pass gun legislation, it turns out that officials in the Nutmeg State were previously trying to woo the company that makes Bushmaster AR-15 automatic rifles to relocate there. The Hartford Courant reports, "On Dec. 6, a top state economic development official sent the Freedom Group an offer for a $1 million loan at the low annual interest rate of 2 percent for 10 years — plus other incentives for the company to move its headquarters, with 25 top executives, from Madison, N.C., to Stamford."
Eight days later, Adam Lanza calmly walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and shot 20 children and six teachers and school administrators. Lanza killed himself at the scene and police later found his mother's body in her home. The Courant reports, "The department withdrew the offer on Dec. 18, four days after the Newtown massacre, according to records released in response to a Courant freedom of information request. The deal was yanked because of a combination of factors, one of them the announcement by the Freedom Group's owner — the private equity and hedge fund group Cerberus Capital Management — that it was putting the firearms maker up for sale."
Deputy Commissioner Ronald F. Angelo Jr., from Connecticut's Department of Economic and Community Development, told the Courant, "It was a significant tragedy that was fresh on everybody's mind. If you take that into account, along with the very unknown structure and unknown condition of the Freedom Group because of the [announced] sale of that entity by its parent, it's too much of an unknown, too much of an unpredictable' situation.
In other news, the Senate dropped an assault weapons ban bill. Daily News columnist Mike Lupica says this "moment of Newtown" is now lost: "It was officially lost in Washington on Tuesday, lost to fear and lost to ignorance and lost to the NRA. One last time: If not a ban on assault weapons now, then when? Shame on them all."
