For the past several weeks, employees at Swamp Yankee Arms have been fielding a barrage of phone calls and aiding a steady stream of customers at the Jewett City gun shop.

Gun sales are brisk, but that’s not the reason so many people are coming in. Shop owner Zachary Pearson said the increase is because of a scramble by gun owners to meet a May 1 deadline to register certain firearms to comply with the new state assault weapon regulations.

Among a host of other provisions, a bill signed into law last year requires a certificate of possession for firearms referred to as “CT Other” or “Other” as well as guns manufactured prior to September 1994 that had been grandfathered and exempt from the state’s assault weapons ban. While they might already be registered, the gun owners now need a certificate of possession. Once the certificate is obtained, they are still legal to own but transfer or sale of the weapons is generally barred in Connecticut.

Without a certificate of possession, Pearson said, gun owners could face felony criminal charges “for nothing more than owning a gun they purchased legally.”

The term “Other” refers to guns that were not part of the state’s existing assault weapons ban, semi-automatic firearms similar to the banned AR-15-style rifles that are not quite a rifle or a pistol. The guns were popular because they had features, such as arm brace instead of a stock, when the expanded ban on assault weapons was enacted.

What some have called an innovation, others say is simply a loophole in the state’s law that is now closed as part of House Bill 6667, An Act Addressing Gun Violence, that was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont in June 2023.

“For the last two or three months we’ve been slammed, trying to help people comply,” Pearson said. “Between the phone calls asking for help and people coming in, we’ve essentially dropped everything else and focused on that. It’s just brutal what the state is doing to these people.”

Swamp Yankee Arms on Saturday was busy with a mix of customers, some browsing the firearms but many seeking help with the registration process. Pearson has 10 employees and one group of those employees is solely dedicated to answering questions and walking gun owners through the steps of registering their firearms with the state.

Wanting to avoid any legal hassles, Brian Stearns of Montville visited the shop on Saturday for help with the registration process. The process involves entering the state Department of Public Safety online portal, verifying his identity and browsing through the state’s database of purchased guns to find the one that needed to be registered.

“I’d prefer that I didn’t have to jump through the hoops to comply, but you have to do your due diligence, I guess,” Stearns said.

Stearns said the state’s gun laws are “quite restricting,” and considering the number of gun enthusiasts and sportsmen in the state, was surprised the state didn’t make more of an effort to get the word out. He knew about the law because there was a buzz around in his circles but said he could understand why some gun owners might be caught unaware.

Pearson said he worried about owners of firearms that had purchased the guns and do not know about the law. Like others who opposed the new restrictions, Pearson said said he’s also perturbed by misinformation among proponents of stricter gun laws.

“There have been zero crimes committed with these (Other) weapons. In my opinion, what the state is doing to the law abiding gun owners is far worse than what they are doing to the criminals,” Pearson said.

A side effect of the new law was an increase in sales.

“For six months prior to the ban there was a spending craze,” Pearson said. “We were stacking firearms floor to the ceiling just to get them out the door. There’s thousands of these guns out there.”

A representative from the state police Special Licensing and Firearms Unit did not have a number of certificate of possessions submitted because of the number of ways they can be submitted but said it is in the “tens of thousands.“

The new law passed in June, among other provisions, bans the open carry of firearms, increases penalties for repeat offenders, updates the state’s 2019 ban on unregistered ghost guns, prevents bulk purchases of handguns, further restricts use of body armor and updates pistol training requirements. Most of the provisions took effect last year.

Hundreds of people submitted testimony either opposing or supporting the state’s new gun laws. State Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington had criticized the bill for lack of any provisions he said would address the root cause of gun violence. Others applauded the state’s efforts to make the state one of the most restrictive in the country.

In his written testimony in favor of the HB 6667 in March 2023, Jonathan Perloe, communications director for Connecticut Against Gun Violence, said he got involved in the gun violence prevention movement after Sandy Hook School shooting in 2012.

“When I attended the March for Change rally at the Capitol on Valentine’s Day 2013, about 1,500 Americans had been killed by the epidemic of gun violence since the Newtown massacre,” Perloe testified. “In the 10 years since, another 400,000 Americans have lost their lives, including more than the 1,700 in Connecticut.”

Former state representative Michael Lawlor, associate professor in the criminal justice department of the University of New Haven, said the state has to update its laws to keep up with gun manufacturers.

The first major update to the assault weapons ban in the state came in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012, when Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults. Lanza, who also killed himself and his mother, had used a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15-style firearm purchase legally by his mother. The gun did not fall within the assault weapons ban at the time, Lawlor said.

“Every time we banned assault weapons, you have to describe them and name them. The gun manufacturers started making slightly modified guns to get around the ban,” Lawlor said. “The law keeps expanding because people keep trying to find loopholes and taking advantage of them.”

“Every citizen has a right to bear arms,” Lawlor said, but mass shootings such as Sandy Hook leave people less sympathetic to those people who want to own assault weapons.

g.smith@theday.com

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information from the state police Special Licensing & Firearms unit, which clarified that registration and certificate of possession are two different things.