A small change of language in a firearms bill passed during the 2025 legislative session will no longer require first selectmen of small towns to sign off on pistol permits and instead delegate that responsibility to the Connecticut State Police who service their area.

House Bill 7056, passed nearly unanimously in the House and Senate before being signed into law, replaces the terms “police chief,” “municipal CEO,” and “resident state trooper,” with a single term – “local permitting authority” – and allows the first selectman to designate authority for handling local firearm permits to the state police in towns where there is neither a municipal police force, nor a resident state trooper. 

In towns where there is no local police force, the first selectman is considered the chief of police, according to Rep. Pat Boyd, D-Pomfret, who represents several towns with neither a police force nor a resident trooper, authored the language change and pushed through the bill in the legislature.

“In really small, rural towns, the first selectperson is also the chief of police,” Boyd said on the House floor. “When applying for a pistol permit the chief of police – the first selectperson – has to sign off on the suitability study. This allows the state police, even if there is not a resident state trooper, to be able to take over that function at the request of the town.”

Jim Rivers, head of the Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments and former town manager for Windham, said he jokingly referred to the legislation as the “Jim Rivers bill,” and that it would ease the burden for small town officials.

“One of the things I hated to do, and as town manager hated to do, was sign pistol permits,” Rivers said during a meeting of the Connecticut Association of Councils of Governments. “The way the bill is written, if you have a police department, a police chief, they will continue to handle that, but if you’re a CEO, you won’t have to handle it.”

Rivers said they haven’t yet seen how the paperwork is going to play out from the Department of Public Safety, but he said the practice has become cumbersome for small town officials, who apparently have to go through training by the federal government to know what to look for in a permit application. “Most of my first selectmen have complained about that,” Rivers said during the meeting.

In towns without a police force, the first selectman is often responsible for issuing the temporary, local permit, which includes reviewing the application and supporting documents, as well as conducting a background check. After receiving a temporary permit, the applicant then submits an application to the state police for a full permit.

There are 95 municipal police departments in Connecticut, while the rest of Connecticut’s municipalities either have a resident state trooper or are under the jurisdiction of the state police, according to a 2023 report by the Office of Legislative Research. There are roughly 23 municipalities that have neither a municipal police force, nor a resident state trooper, and would likely be most affected by the change in statutory language, and they are nearly all concentrated in the northeast and northwest corners of the state.  

The other part of the bill carves out an exception to Connecticut’s law that restricts the number of handguns that can be purchased within thirty days, allowing federal defense contractors and nuclear power facilities with their own security to be exempted from the restriction.

During NECOG’s May meeting, Rivers wrote that Rep. Boyd “delivered a win for us with the passage of the Handgun Permit legislation change, moving approval of the permits in non-police department towns to the Department of Public Safety,” in his executive director report.

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