NEW HAVEN -- He is no fan of the governor, but he says he still took the trouble to send him a Christmas gift that could arrive any day now.
Gun activist Mike Vanderboegh, author of the blog, sipseystreetirregulars, put Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on his list and claimed an illegal high-capacity magazine was due to be delivered on Thursday.
Andrew Doba, spokesman for Malloy, said no such package has arrived at the Capitol.
After a check with the U.S. Postal Service, Vanderboegh later claimed it was "still somewhere in the USPS system."
Connecticut outlawed new magazines with more than 10 rounds when it passed major gun violence reduction legislation on April 4, moving it up the ranks to second place behind California for the toughest laws in the country.
Residents with magazines with more than 10 bullets purchased before that date can keep them, but they have to be registered by Jan. 1 and there are strict rules on where they can be stored and how they are transported.
The likelihood the "gift" will land on Malloy's desk is probably zero as such a package would be vetted by the Capitol police with the state police brought into the mix for suspicious deliveries.
Vanderboegh was at a pro-gun rally at the state Capitol in April where he urged citizens to be the best lawbreakers they could be by resisting the new gun laws.
He threatened then to be back with the forbidden ammunition "without the state's permission or paperwork."
Vanderboegh, of Alabama, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, led the Sons of Liberty, an antigovernment militia, in the 1990s and most recently is the founder of THREE%ER, which was so named "from the theory that only 3% of American colonials actually fought the British."
He also is credited with keeping the government's bungled Operation Fast and Furious, where weapons were sold to illegal straw buyers to track Mexican drug cartel leaders, in the news.
Vanderboegh has spoken often of the need for an armed citizenry to stand up to a tyrannical government, as he did in his speech in Hartford.
In his blog, he said he sent one 30-round standard capacity AR15/M4 magazine to Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, accompanied by a letter, as a way to protest its new gun laws that restrict magazines to 15 bullets. The letter was dated Dec. 18 and was on his blog on Dec. 21.
"For my part, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such thirty-round magazines as you now own in defiance of that law -- the fact that you hold it in your hand means that we have now imported into you state more than a hundred such magazines in defiance of your ill-considered diktat," he wrote.
Megan Castle, a spokeswoman for Hickenlooper, said she was "not aware that our office received the package."
Vanderboegh said the gift he sent to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley was allegedly signed for on Thursday, while the one to Hinkenlooper "should have delivered no later than Christmas Eve. Apparently went out for delivery today. That's the postal turtle for you."
Vanderboegh wrote that he and his friends "believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void."
He added that "making otherwise law-abiding folks into criminals is a rather stupid thing to do, for they may decide that if they are going to be considered criminals by petty dictators posing as state officials that they should probably be the very best, most successful criminals they can be."
Vanderboegh, in April, promised to return to Connecticut to smuggle in illegal magazines. In an email to the Register, he said others did so, but he couldn't for health reasons. He also promised in April to wait to be arrested while having a pizza at Frank Pepe's Pizzeria in New Haven.
"Still looking forward to Frank Pepe's pizza. I will bring more ammo and magazines to CT in the spring," he wrote Thursday.
In his Christmas Eve blog post, he dubbed his alleged gifting, "Toys for Totalitarians," and told his supporters that he currently was low on donated magazines and money to ship them, and he made a fund-raising pitch.
"Donations of either will be greatly appreciated," he wrote.
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