Governor Hochul of New York has signed a veritable dearth, in efficacy, of new firearms laws into effect for the Empire State.
“It just keeps happening. Shots ring out, flags come down and nothing ever changes — except here in New York,” Hochul said.
Apparently items like Cuomo’s SAFE Act, which failed to stop the Buffalo shooter despite being touted as the model for firearm safety legislation, are the changes they mean? Is she saying legislation in other states hasn’t changed? I’m not sure what she is casing dispersions at, but in any manner that we look at it she seems to have extremely short term memory. Forgetful of the rash of failed policies that haven’t stopped attacks in her state or other states with constrictive rule formats.
A law meant to keep guns away from people who are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others will expand to make health care professionals who have examined a person within the last six months eligible to file extreme risk protection orders. So the Red Flag law that failed will now be expanded to people who have little to no background in legal protections for their clients, because they are doctors and not lawyers, opening them up to a rash of new complex liabilities for either acting or failing to act. I see no problems here at all. Law enforcement and local prosecutors in New York will also be able to file risk protection orders based on credible information that a person is likely to engage in dangerous behavior.
What methodology they use to attribute credible, what liabilities the state is taking on for getting it wrong, and what the restitution for aggrieved parties will be is entirely unknown. But I doubt the state has put much thought into falsely flagging someone. Better to do something wrong that sounds well intentioned than admit harsh realities, right?
They’ve banned ‘body vests’ too, except for the typical LEO exceptions. I have no notion of how they intend to enforce this provision other than make companies stop shipping new orders to New York.
Officials at the state Division of Criminal Justice Services will also study the feasibility of microstamping of bullets when fired from a gun, a long-sought measure that has sat on a shelf in Albany for years. No one is going to bring up that it is long sought after because it is a pipe dream and that California’s rule is slowing closing their handgun market, by design, because the technology only works in science fiction.
Why New York is eager to continue to emulate the state with the most mass killings and most school shootings in the nation is beyond me.
Taken together, the measures approved in the final days of the legislative session are meant to address the shootings in Buffalo and Texas. The alleged 18-year-old gunman in Buffalo is said to have used an AR-15-style rifle. And, despite the existence of a red flag law on the books for the last several years in New York, was able to obtain firearms despite allegedly threatening his high school. So the law didn’t work. The change in the law will make the red flag work better. The change in the age limitations are a paper tiger provision, we have a myriad examples where this rule has already been circumvented in some manner and yet Hochul and crew are like…
