Gunowners and firearms dealers have filed a lawsuit in Connecticut’s Superior Court in an attempt to overturn part of the state’s 1993 legislation banning “assault-type weapons,” according to The Connecticut Post of Bridgeport.

The plaintiffs, among them a longtime Stratford gun dealer, claim that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) is unable to administer the regulations in a uniform manner.

The suit charges two other plaintiffs purchased identical firearms, but when they attempted to register them on successive days with State Police in Canaan last summer, one rifle was seized, while the other owner was allowed to keep his.

The case was filed on April 17 in state Superior Court in Litchfield, the site of the failed 1994 attempt to overturn the state’s controversial restrictions on so-called assault weapons.

Ralph D. Sherman, a West Hartford lawyer, said that the suit asks the court to declare the regulations void and order DPS Commissioner Arthur L. Spada to neither enforce them nor arrest anyone for possessing firearms previously deemed illegal.

The suit also requests the termination of a DPS database on such guns.

“They are phony regulations,” said Sherman, who is the chairman of Gunsafe, an organization of Connecticut firearm owners. “The Department of Public Safety has changed its mind several times on what these regulations are supposed to be. It’s a major challenge to an administrative agency that’s not following correct procedure.”

Sherman charged that the DPS might now say that thousands of guns purchased legally since 1993 may now be illegal.

The plaintiffs include Daniel Patten Sr. of upstate Norfolk, Lawrence DeLuca of nearby Barkhamsted and Frank D’Andrea, owner of D’Andrea’s Gun Case, in Stratford. Sherman’s co-counsel is Andrew J. Buzzi Jr. of Danbury.

The lawsuit claims that Patten received a letter from the DPS telling him to register his Hungarian AKM target rifle. On Aug. 6, he went to the Troop B Barracks in Canaan and was told that since he purchased it back in the 1980s they would have to seize it.

The next day, DeLuca brought his Hungarian AKM, with a serial number nearly identical to that of Patten’s gun, to the barracks and was given a certificate of possession, Sherman said.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Michael P. Lawlor (D-East Haven), a leading proponent of gun control, defended the state’s assault weapons ban.

Blumenthal said the state Supreme Court had upheld the 1993 law in a previous challenge.

Lawlor said if there’s a problem in registration procedures, the General Assembly can revisit the ban. Last year, a law was passed to allow owners of legally purchased guns until Oct. 1, 2003, to apply for a state certificate to possess their guns if they were purchased between October 1993 and May of last year.

Robert Crook, president of the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, a plaintiff in the 1994 appeal, told The Post that as the deadline approaches, more and more rifle owners are baffled by the state’s rules.