Journal photo/ Glenn Osmundson
An overflow crowd watches the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on gun-control bills on a television set up on the first floor.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A Senate Judiciary hearing on most of the gun legislation proposed by Governor Chafee, legislative leaders and law enforcement lasted into early Friday morning, with an overwhelmingly majority of gun-rights supporters packing the 9 1/2 hour hearing.
Gun lobbyists, gun enthusiasts, the ACLU, and some legislators testified against the bills, particularly bans on semiautomatic assault weapons and magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and giving the attorney general's office the sole discretionary power to grant permits to carry concealed weapons. The public defender's office testified against the mandatory sentences.
Some said the solution was more guns, and that the world had changed so that people weren't safe in gun-free zones like schools.
"You never hear about mass killings at gun clubs," said Burrillville resident Mike Puyana, of the Rhode Island Tea Party. "That's why animals in the wild hunt the sickest and the weak, not the strongest in the herd."
The few who spoke in favor of the bills -- police, attorney general's office, pediatricians, and others -- kept trying to turn attention back to victims of shooting -- from the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in nearby Connecticut, to the murders in Providence.
Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, said there needed to be compromise, and he invited gun-rights supporters to visit the emergency rooms and the Institute to see the aftermath of gun violence.
"You say the problem is people shooting, and we agree with you," Gross said. "But you've got to contribute."