Groton — U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said Monday he’s optimistic that Congress will do something to address gun violence in the wake of the latest mass shooting to rock the country.

Seventeen people, 14 of them teenagers, died Feb. 14 in a mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school.

“In my personal opinion, it feels different (this time),” he said, responding to an audience member during a Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut luncheon at the Groton Inn and Suites.

Courtney delivered a legislative update, then took questions on topics that included immigration, the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy and State Department staffing. He’d been scheduled to speak last month but had to reschedule amid a government shutdown. He underwent hip-replacement surgery Jan. 23 at Hartford Hospital.

Courtney said the White House has been forced to talk about gun violence in a way it hadn’t following other recent mass shootings, providing Congress with an opportunity to move on the issue.

He noted that after the 2012 shootings at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut state lawmakers passed legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and making it easier to confiscate guns in cases in which there is probable cause to believe individuals are a danger to themselves or others.

Courtney said all of the bills were challenged on Second Amendment grounds — the constitutional right to bear arms.

"So it’s not the case," he said, "that we are helpless because of the Second Amendment.”

Courtney said House Democrats had just gotten a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused earlier Monday to consider the Trump administration’s appeal of a lower court’s order that the administration keep accepting renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Courtney said the public overwhelmingly supports granting some 800,000 childhood immigrants legal status and a pathway to citizenship.

He is a co-sponsor of the Dream Act, which would codify DACA.

“Our whole caucus would support it,” Courtney said, referring to House Democrats. Twenty-seven Republicans who have signed onto the legislation would as well, enough to “get it to the president’s desk,” he said.

Courtney said recent budget proposals would protect the Environmental Protection Agency from cuts and that the Appropriations Committee was trying to ensure that funding is in place for State Department positions, many of which are unfilled.

“We need to have a strong diplomatic team,” he said. “I’m reminded of what Gen. (James) Mattis, the secretary of Defense, said: ‘If you cut the State Department, you better buy me some more bullets.’”

“I wish I had a better answer for you,” Courtney said.

On a positive note, he said the president's 2019 budget proposal reflects the “growing military value” of the Submarine Base and Electric Boat, where the number of workers is more than twice what it was in 2008 and is expected to grow to more than 20,000 in the years ahead.

He said negotiation of a contract for future submarine production is “at a critical juncture.”

The president’s budget would eliminate funding for Sea Grant research programs, including one based at the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps families pay their heating bills. Courtney called the cut “just ridiculous.”

b.hallenbeck@theday.com