Ways to shoot your gun faster have been around for ages now. They’re nothing new, and prior to Las Vegas, they were almost never used in a crime of any sort, so far as I’ve been able to tell. They were toys slapped onto guns to amuse people as they wasted ammo at a range day and not much else.

In Connecticut, though, they’re now history.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat with a long history of advocating gun control measures, signed a law on Thursday outlawing a variety of firearm accessories. The proposal, HB 5542, creates a new felony for the sale and possession of a “rate of fire enhancement” as defined under the new law. It was approved last month in the state House 114-35 and the Senate 26-10, with Dems pushing hard for the bill. “This should be the law throughout the entire country,” said Malloy during a press conference that included gun control advocates, high school students and lawmakers. “There is no reason why anyone needs to own a device that can fire 90 bullets every 10 seconds but for the mass killing of people.”

I’m going to interrupt here and mention that my initial reactions to Malloy’s comments are, well, unprintable. I’m a professional, and I try not to use that kind of language when I’m working. I’m sure you can imagine.

However, I will add that “need” is irrelevant when it comes to our rights. There’s no need for Malloy to pontificate on what he thinks the laws in the rest of the country should be, yet there he is anyway. See how that works?

The same is true with “rate of fire enhancements.” I shouldn’t have to illustrate a need to have something.

Schmuck.

Anyway, back to the story.

The new law, now Public Act No. 18-29, defines a “rate of fire enhancement” as any bump stock, binary trigger, trigger crank or similar device and makes it a Class D felony under Connecticut law to manufacture, own, possess, sell or transfer one. Violators could face five years in prison and a fine up to $5,000. There is no route to legal ownership or grandfathering of devices already in circulation in the state, leaving those with one on their hands until October to comply with the law.

It doesn’t appear that shoelaces or rubber bands, both of which can be used for bump fire, are covered under this bill.

Or do those not count because people “need” those?

The truth is, Connecticut and most other states have no issue with these devices. They’ve never seen a problem with them within their borders. The nation has seen precisely one. It was horrific, but these aren’t commonly used for crime, and it’s beyond time to stop pretending anyone is safer from a law like this.

It should be noted that despite the availability of such devices since Las Vegas, not a single other mass shooter using an AR-15 style rifle has used bump fire.

In other words, Malloy and his ilk are doing nothing but waving the flag to their fellow travelers, signaling how they care so hard.

In the meantime, work that went into this could have been devoted to doing something that might actually make life better for Connecticut’s citizens.