New London — Scott Wilson says "liberty will always find a way" for American citizens when it comes to their right to keep and bear arms.

The 55-year-old Whaling City native says this even though, in the decade since he co-founded the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, the state experienced one of the deadliest school shootings in history and passed some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

He has reason to be hopeful, since during that same decade, CCDL membership grew, Wilson said, to 32,000 people. The group's  "Carry On!" bumper stickers, depicting a black handgun superimposed over a white map of Connecticut, became a familiar sight on state roadways. The number of state residents holding pistol permits grew from approximately 70,000 in 2009 to 269,137 in October 2018, said Wilson, who obtained the information through a Freedom of Information request. Gun sales were strong.

After 10 years of consuming effort to protect gun rights, he's stepping down as CCDL's president but said during an interview this past week at The Day that he would continue to serve on the executive committee. The new president will be elected Dec. 3.

"I hope I've been a good voice for our cause," Wilson said. "I know that going forward we have terrific individuals who are stepping up to bring CCDL into a new era. We have accrued a lot of hard-fought experience over the years for our next president to build on."

Since finding like-minded Nutmeggers on internet gun forums and forming the nonprofit gun rights organization in 2009, Wilson has become a familiar figure in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, where he testified frequently on various firearms bills.

He has closely followed, and CCDL has participated in, litigation involving Second Amendment issues. He's organized rallies, picnics, poker runs and other social and fund-raising events in support of the cause.

Wilson also has become the news media's go-to guy for questions about gun rights, returning calls from newspaper reporters or appearing on TV and radio to calmly and articulately explain his group's unyielding support of Second Amendment rights. 

"Scott's true gift is his ability to communicate his point passionately but unemotionally," said Bob Margolis, general manager of the Hartford Gun Club and owner of the LifeSafe Training firearms training and sales company. "He's the personality we needed to be the spokesman for Second Amendment here in Connecticut."

Wilson said he's been the recipient of emails and phone calls that "bordered on threatening," and that he typically chooses not to respond to avoid ramping up the dialogue and making it more negative.

"I think we all want the same thing," Wilson said. "We all want peace. But there's two different mindsets. Our mindset is to make sure people are prepared to protect themselves and their families."

The other mindset, Wilson said, belongs to those for whom the "long game would be banning and confiscating firearms for what, we view, would be a false Utopian scenario."

A regular guy

Wilson, a husband, father and grandfather who works in the freight logistics business, may not have been the gun rights advocate some were expecting. In public, he wears button-down shirts or business suits, not the flannel shirts and camo pants some associate with the movement. He says he doesn't typically choose to watch movies with gratuitous violence. He likes to shoot trap, skeet and handguns, but in his free time is just as likely to be at home playing his electric guitar, running or walking the beach with his beloved wife, Becky.

He owns several handguns and several long guns, including a Bushmaster XM-15, the type of firearm used in the Sandy Hook school shooting.

State Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, a Second Amendment defender and lawyer who was named CCDL's legislator of the year, said he respects Wilson and CCDL for, within 10 years, "turning an organization which could meet in a phone booth into an organization that could fill a football stadium."

"They've certainly rallied the supporters of civil rights, and they have put a human face on a group of people that are deliberately stereotyped by those who would like to see the civilian ownership of firearms eliminated," Dubitsky said by phone Thursday. "Having a guy like Scott in charge of an organization like this shows that he is no flame-throwing crazy. He's just a regular guy with a family that is fighting to prevent people from losing their right to protect themselves and their families."

A surprising fact to some is that Wilson is a gunshot victim.

When he was 14, he said, his brother accidentally shot him in the shoulder and neck with a gun a friend had brought to the family home. He said he nearly bled to death by the time he got to the hospital, and the brother's friend was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit.

Wilson didn't grow up around guns, for the most part. He said his father left the family when he was 2 years old, and he didn't have anyone to teach him about firearms or firearms safety. He didn't apply for his pistol permit until 2003.  

"Seeing the news cycles after Sept. 11, the world seemed like less of a safe place, and I thought it might be a good time to get my permit," he said.

He became interested in policy and said that on the day in 2008 that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision upholding the Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller, he was reading about it on the SCOTUS blog. It turned out to be a narrowly written opinion, he said. There were many legal challenges to follow, up to and including the potentially game-changing lawsuit brought against gunmaker Remington Arms and others by families of those killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting. The CCDL has filed amicus briefs in that and other lawsuits.

The CCDL's executive board meetings can be loud and boisterous, as its members are all strong-willed, John Beidler of Southington, a former treasurer of the group, said by phone. Everybody gets to speak their opinion, and Wilson is able to steer the discussion in the right direction, getting input from all sides, Beidler said. When they leave the meeting, all remain friends. 

Public Act 13-3, passed in response to Sandy Hook, banned over 100 models or styles of firearms, banned magazines that can hold over 10 rounds of ammunition, and required registration by those who already owned the large-capacity magazines. This past legislative session, the General Assembly restricted so-called ghost guns, which are firearms that can be assembled out of kits, changed storage laws and, with input from CCDL, compelled the State Board of Education to incorporate gun safety into school curricula. 

Beidler and others said the gun control laws could have been even more restrictive if Wilson and CCDL were not able to provide information to legislators on all sides.

"There were actually some ridiculous things going on," Beidler said, including a proposal to ban "black guns."

"What happened was sickening and tragic, and we didn't want to diminish that," he said of Sandy Hook. "We wanted to put on the table that it was this deranged young man, and it was mental health issues."

Wilson and the others said the group did not encourage anybody to go out and buy certain models of guns or magazines before laws went into effect banning them, though that is what occurred.

"CCDL does not promote everybody having a gun, not at all," Beidler said. "We promote that everybody has the right to arm themselves in defense of themselves and their family and the other citizens of the public, whereas they want to tell us nobody can have a gun."

k.florin@theday.com