Richard Avino clearly comes across as someone suffering from what sounds like someone in a bit of a mental health crisis, so we’re glad he was taken into custody by the North Haven (CT) Police Department and that his firearms were removed from his possession for safekeeping.  But look at what the laughably named “Constitution State” considers to be “assault weapons.”

A North Haven man was arrested after he approached a woman’s car early Sunday morning with a “banned assault weapon” because he thought someone was watching him, according to police.

The unidentified woman told police that she was parked at a North Haven Medical Center around 12:45 a.m. That’s when she told police that a man, who was later identified as Richard Avino, approached her vehicle with a rifle in hand.  The woman told police that Avino “pointed” a rifle that was “equipped with a red laser sight” at her.

Police located Avino at his home on Nettleton Avenue later that morning and arrested him.

During a search of Avino’s home, officers determined that he did not possess the proper permits to own the rifle in question. Officers located a second assault weapon in the home and seized six firearms total from the residence.

“Assault weapons?”

Really, Connecticut?

I don’t see an “assault weapon.” I see a Yugoslavian copy of an obsolete Russian Simonov carbine that has been defaced with a soulless Tapco stock, (above). It uses a fixed magazine, is not selective-fire, and serves as a popular close-range budget deer rifle in much of the United States. I still have the SKS my father purchased for me when I was in my teens, and I have many fond memories of carrying that rifle in the woods to turn Bambi into jerky and stew meat.

The other “assault weapon” charge Avino picked up was for a Hi-Point pistol-caliber carbine, arguably one of the ugliest and ungainly firearms known to man. It has never been fielded by any military force, anywhere, and yet still runs afoul of Connecticut’s craven politicians, who seem to think nearly every firearm is a “weapon of war.”

I really feel sorry that the North Haven Police are forced to call these two ordinary carbines “assault weapons” under Connecticut’s lame laws.