There’s a fine line between getting stuff done and making stuff up, and New York’s pols keep crossing it and passing laws that make for powerful press conferences but not much else.
Since May’s Buffalo massacre, where a 18-year-old racist murdered 10 innocent Black people in a grocery story in a matter of minutes, Gov. Hochul and the Legislature have moved swiftly but not so surely.
Hochul signed a law that she said banned body armor sales — but that didn’t actually mention “body armor” and wouldn’t have applied to the gear the teen white supremacist actually used in Buffalo.
Albany misfire. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
A law that raised the age for buying semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21, taking effect after 90 days — which passed weeks after a federal appeals panel struck down a similar law in California and which led to a predictable surge in sales in New York.
A law that expanded the state’s first-of-its-kind red flag flaw, which hadn’t flagged the Buffalo mass murderer, and which the president of the New York State Bar Association says continues to be “confusing, overly complex and riddled with loopholes that failed to allow for basic constitutional protections.”
And a sweeping package of new gun-permit laws (including an amendment to the two-month-old body armor law so that it would cover the sort worn by the Buffalo murderer) passed days after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s restrictive old ones in a terrible decision premised on the idea Americans need firearms to protect ourselves.
“What we had to do is come back within days, and say to Supreme Court justices, those in the majority who want to take us backwards, ‘We’re not going there with you. We’re going to stand up, pass smart legislation,’ ” Hochul boasted. “And that’s what I signed immediately.”
It was legislation, but it doesn’t look so smart.
Instead of taking time to parse the decision and craft a response to the Supremes that would stand up, Hochul, running for a term of her own, talked smack about how “we’re not going there with you.” That’s no way to run a state, or to keep a promise to “make sure that New Yorkers are safe.”
Sure enough, Syracuse Federal Judge Glenn Suddaby on Thursday struck down most of the law, including the requirement to submit character references, give the state access to three years of all social media accounts and submit to an in-person interview to get a license.
“In essence,” he wrote, “New York State has replaced its requirement that an applicant show a special need for self-protection with its requirement that the applicant rebut the presumption that he or she is a danger to himself or herself, while retaining (and even expanding) the open-ended discretion afforded to its licensing officers. New York State has further entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction.”
The judge also struck down many of New York’s “sensitive locations,” including summer camps, performance venues, places that serve alcohol, childcare centers, homeless shelters, subway stations, airport and bus terminals, public libraries, parks and zoos, and Times Square.
Finally, he struck down the provision making private property automatically “gun free” unless owners put up a sign specifically stating that they’re allowed, writing that in so doing “the State of New York is now making a decision for private property owners that they are perfectly able to make for themselves.”
Suddaby’s ruling is legalese for “you just did the exact things that the Supreme Court said you couldn’t do.”
Hochul, in response, said that it is “deeply disappointing that the judge wants to limit my ability to keep New Yorkers safe and to prevent more senseless gun violence” and vowed that she would “continue to do everything in my power to combat the gun violence epidemic and protect New Yorkers.”
She might start by talking seriously with the state’s lawyers next time around about what is, and is not, in her power rather than signing laws written in days and hoping for the best.
And there almost surely will be a next time, as Hochul — whose massive campaign warchest speaks volumes about the state’s pay-to-play culture and how power breeds money breeds power here — appears to be cruising toward a win in November and a term of her own in a state where Democrats have a huge majority against an opponent who’s all for more guns and who won’t even acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.
Suddaby stayed his ruling for three business days to give New York time to appeal, which Attorney General Letitia James says she’s doing, with the case sure to end up at the Supreme Court and its new conservative majority in the event that the Second Circuit reverses the district judge and allows the state’s rules to remain in place for now.
The only thing more ridiculous than the “Gun Free Zone” signs taped to lamp posts around Times Square might be seeing them all torn down before the ball drops on the new year.
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2022, New York Daily News