CT's a bit of an anomaly. Structurally, it's "may issue", but for all intents and purposes, it's been de-facto shall issue for reputable folks since forever.

I believe that CT is "shall issue" in fact because of a CT court decision based upon their constitution. I had to research this at one point. Absent that decision, I don't see CT having become shall issue through its political process.

geekwitha.45 is what I thought, but please Jim give us the case cite if you have it. I agree that CT would not be shall issue through its legislature but I'd sure be surprised if shall issue was accomplished by a state court decision. I have always assumed it was just a long standing policy with the state police.

Interesting ... CT is pretty clearly considered shall issue by the Brady Campaign and handgunlaw.us (the two sites I looked at), but the NRA calls it a "discretionary-reasonable issue" state.

Even if this is so (and CT is way out of my neighborhood, I'm in Colorado) I still would have written the post, just confronted the logic with more detail.

I also know that Iowa falls into this same category with the NRA, but many Iowans don't feel that is warranted and that the authorities have way too much discretionary power.

Anyway ... thanks for pointing this out. I don't know if I should do a correction or not, as I did quote two (hopefully) respectable sources.

>>because of a CT court decision based upon their constitution.

I've never heard that, but that wouldn't surprise me at all.

CT's state constitutional guarantee language is very strong: "Sec. 15. Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.", being one of a handful of states that directly includes individuals, individual lawful purposes, and avoids weasel phrases such as "subject to the power of police".

Vermont has "Vermont carry" as a result of judicial action back around nineteen oh something, when a town tried to require handgun permits, and so there's a tradition of the New England courts doing that sort of thing.

As a native son of CT, I can say that Yankee pragmatism tends to blunt the wilder excesses of neoLiberalism, though I remain at a loss to explain MA, other than "they must enjoy it".

I've done a little more reading on this. It seems that most groups other than the NRA mark CT down as just another "may issue" state. And from reading a few anecdotes, a carry license doesn't appear to be quite as much of a sure thing as in a true "shall issue" state as the authorities can oppose it so long as they aren't being arbitrary etc.