Connecticut lawmakers voted yesterday to approve a new gun control bill in response to last December’s shooting at a school in Newtown in which 20 children and six adults were killed.

After nearly eight hours of debate that lasted until early yesterday morning, the House voted 105-44 in favour of the Bill, which supporters described as one of the toughest in the United States. It followed a 26-10 vote in the Senate Wednesday evening.

Opponents said the Bill infringed the rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

The new law would require background checks for private gun sales, ban the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips of the kind used at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and require current owners of those large clips to register them with the state.

The legislation was proposed after the December 14 attack, in which a gunman used clips that held 30 bullets to fire off 154 rounds in less than five minutes.

Owners of existing clips capable of holding 10 or more bullets would be required to register them with the state. Owning an unregistered high-capacity clip would become a felony offence as of January 1, 2014.