Sandy Hook families confront Gov. Christie on guns

GREENWICH, Conn., July 22 (UPI) -- About 170 people, including some touched by the Sandy Hook school massacre, protested New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's gun bill veto at a Connecticut fundraiser.

Christie was in Greenwich for a fundraiser Monday night for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley, who is in a rematch with Gov. Dannel Malloy after losing by less than a percentage point in 2010. Protesters were angry about Christie's decision to veto a bill that would have limited the size of gun magazines sold in New Jersey to 10 rounds.

One Newtown resident, Richard Boritz, did get a chance to talk to Christie directly about the mass killing in his town. Boritz encountered the governor in a diner and asked him how violence could be curbed without limits on magazine size.

"Every one of these instances of mass killings, we had people with significant mental health issues, and that needs to be dealt with," the governor answered. "It's not the sexy part of it. It's not the stuff that gets you big headlines when you are a politician. It's the stuff that actually gets the job done."

Christie refused to answer a second question from Boritz, saying he was not there for a debate.

Outside the fundraiser, protesters blasted Christie for calling magazine size limits "a trivial approach."

"My friends' lives were not trivial," one sign read.

Marie Therese Morosky, 7, said she lost five friends in the Sandy Hook shooting. Her mother, Katherine, said some of the children were able to escape when Adam Lanza, the former Sandy Hook student who killed 20 children and six staff members there before taking his own life, changed magazines.

"If he had smaller magazines, he would have had to change them more often and perhaps more children would have survived," Morosky said. "A law like that makes a difference in savings lives."