Democratic leaders on Tuesday spoke out against a recently filed lawsuit that seeks to overturn gun laws passed in Connecticut following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including a ban on assault weapons like the one used by the shooter.

On the cusp of the 10-year anniversary of the nation’s deadliest school shooting, in which 20 young children and six educators were killed, a new lawsuit claims that Connecticut’s ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines is unconstitutional.

The suit, originally filed on Sept. 6 by the nonprofit organization National Association for Gun Rights and a woman from New Milford, argues that the post-Sandy Hook ban violates the second amendment rights of Connecticut residents.

According to the non-profit, they recently filed at least five additional lawsuits in other states with similar laws.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont joined Attorney General William Tong, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz, and others outside the Capitol in Hartford on Tuesday to defend the constitutionality of the ban and to remind people what prompted it.

Tong said he clearly remembers the day a hush fell over the State Capitol when parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook shooting first came to Hartford to beg for stricter gun laws.

“They came here to plead with us, particularly members of the judiciary committee, to write the strictest gun laws in the nation,” said Tong.

“We heard their pleas and we passed the strictest gun laws in the nation,” said Tong. “And since then, in these past 10 years, we have kept people safe. That’s what this is about, it’s about them, it’s about families.”

Tong said that being at the task of being at the forefront of gun safety legislation was thrust upon Connecticut in December of 2012.

“This is not a fight we chose. Nobody wants to be here, but we’re here because of what happened 10 years ago, what still happens occasionally in our state, to other families and families across this country,” he said.

The Sandy Hook massacre forever changed Connecticut, he said.

“Unfortunately this great tragedy, this suffering, this loss, is a part of who we are. We are joined in a community of loss that nobody else would want to be a part of. It’s a part of who we are as a state and as a people.”

Tong said he isn’t concerned about the ban being overturned under a Lamont administration but would be concerned about the ban staying in place if Bob Stefanowski, Lamont’s Republican challenger for governor, were to be elected.

“We don’t want to go back to a place where someone like Adam Lanza can get ahold of a firearm and murder 26 people,” Tong said, referencing the Sandy Hook shooter.

Lamont shared a similar sentiment in a statement last week, saying Connecticut’s law banning assault weapons is “overwhelmingly supported by the people who live here.”

Tong said he has been anticipating challenges to Connecticut’s gun laws since June, when the Supreme Court overturned a New York gun-safety law in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

“I said once they issued the Bruen decision that we would see a raft of litigation challenging Connecticut’s gun laws and that they would come for us,” said Tong. “And so they have.”

On June 23, the Supreme Court ruled that a New York requirement that residents prove “proper cause” or special needs for self-decent in order to obtain a license to carry a gun in public spaces was unconstitutional. The court overturned the New York law the same week they overturned Roe vs. Wade.

Tong and Lamont both pointed out that the new federal lawsuit was filed by an out-of-state organization.

“This is not homegrown litigation, this is not people in Connecticut rising up to assert their rights, these are people from faraway places,” said Tong.

“These folks have manufactured a controversy, have manufactured a lawsuit to come and challenge Connecticut’s gun laws.”

Lamont said Connecticut’s laws, like red flag laws that keep folks who demonstrate concerning behavior from purchasing firearms, may have stopped the recent elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas and saved lives. He hopes other states implement laws like Connecticut to prevent further tragedies.

“We learned the hard way after Sandy Hook, I hope to God Texas learns after Uvalde,” said Lamont.

Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said experts have found that Connecticut saw a reduction in gun violence when the assault weapon and high capacity magazine ban was in effect, and a spike in homicides when it was not.

“We are literally talking about a bill that is saving lives, he said Tuesday, when he held up two framed photos: one of an automatic weapon and one of the children and teachers killed in Sandy Hook.

Stein said he was struck by language in the lawsuit that said Americans “have a right to peacefully own these weapons of war.”

The lawsuit takes issue with the term assault weapon, claiming the language “is a rhetorically charged political term meant to stir the emotions of the public against those persons who choose to exercise their right to possess certain semi-automatic firearms.” Those firearms, the lawsuit argues, are commonly owned by “millions of law-abiding American citizens for lawful purposes.”

Stein, in criticizing the claim to peaceful ownership of assault weapons, went through a list of some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings and the weapons used in each of them, from Columbine to Uvalde.

“Let’s talk about how peaceful these weapons have been,” he said, asking people to look at the two photos he held and make a choice. “The plain and simple truth is that if the assault weapons ban is repealed more people will die here in Connecticut and around the country,” he said.

“This is about our safety, our lives and our children,” said Stein.

Bysiewicz said that Connecticut residents know all too well the reason for the law.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook, said Bysiewicz, Democrats and Republicans “came together to pass very strong, stringent gun safety laws in our state and we did it because we wanted to prevent future carnage.”

“Our gun laws since then have been held up as a model for other states across the country and even for our United States Congress,” she said.

Tong said that he and Connecticut’s other Democratic leaders have no intention of taking “a step backward.”

“We are not going back. We are not going back to a time when weapons of war are on our streets, where assault weapons are available to anybody and where children like the children and the teachers and the families at Sandy Hook are put at risk, nobody here is going back,” said Tong.

The federal lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s laws was filed in United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. The suit was brought by both the NAGR and Patricia Brought of New Milford against Lamont, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick J. Griffin and David R. Shannon, State’s Attorney in the Litchfield Judicial District.

On Tuesday, the NAGR filed an amended complaint in U.S. District Court, according to CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas. Brought is out as the local plaintiff, replaced by Toni Theresa Spera Flanigan of Granby.

It turns out that Brought doesn’t own firearms or is interested in challenging the state, Pazniokas said.

Flanigan is also not a gun owner, according to Pazniokas. The amended lawsuit said, “She is a member of NAGR. She intends to acquire arms putatively made illegal by the Statutes and but for the Statutes would do so.”

According to the originally filed suit, NAGR “seeks to defend the right of all law-abiding individuals to keep and bear arms”, including members who reside in Connecticut who they say are affected by the ban.

The NAGR argues in its complaint that its members have the right to keep, possess, acquire and transfer lawful firearms for self-defense and other lawful purposes. The suit also argues that plaintiffs “should not be forced to choose between risking criminal prosecution and exercising their constitutional rights.”

Tong said he is confident that Connecticut’s ban does not infringe upon any residents’ constitutional rights.

“Let me say it clearly so everybody understands: Connecticut’s gun laws are constitutional. Period.”