The National Rifle Association's Connecticut lobbyist said the state's new gun laws are “a real shame” and “a disservice to what happened and the children” who were killed in the December 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

On April 4, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed gun violence prevention legislation into law, which included expanded background checks and a strengthened assault weapons ban among other measures.

NRA lobbyist John Hohenwarter's comments, which were made on the April 3 edition of the NRA's news program Cam & Company, were a reaction to reports that the Connecticut legislature was moving to pass a gun violence prevention package:

HOHENWARTER: [I'm] not very optimistic. I think the saddest part of this day is not the fact that they are throwing the Second Amendment under the bus up there, but the fact that there's not going to be a family or child safer because of it.

CAM EDWARDS, HOST: Well, absolutely, John. And, you know, that's the sad thing is that when you look at these measures, I mean, we keep hearing people say, “Oh, this is going to make us safer,” but yet they never say how. Instead, when you ask how, then it turns into an argument of shame on you for not supporting these bills, shame on you for not supporting these things that will make us safer. But they never explain how these will work to reduce violent crime, how these will work to prevent another tragedy, another massacre like what we saw in Newtown, Connecticut.

HOHENWARTER: Well, they can't explain it, you know. We have, just in the last hour two members that are now - at one time were no votes - that are now yes votes, because they believe the bill  because it doesn't have confiscation in it is a better bill. So they are voting on a bad bill because it doesn't have confiscation in it. I mean, this bill, basically, takes you to a point that the only thing they're doing is not melting guns down now in the state of Connecticut. And it's a real shame, because it's a disservice to what happened and the children and the tragedy to see them push through a policy like this. And it's Obamacare all over. It's a 139 page bill in which probably 90 percent of them never read the bill. [emphasis added]

In February, Think Progress called attention to a comment made by a lobbyist for a Wisconsin NRA-affiliated group that the NRA's agenda in that state would was “going to be delayed as the 'Connecticut effect' has to go through the process.”