Anti-Second Amendment politicians returned to Albany late this week and did the bidding of Gov. Kathy Hochul. She called the Legislature back into an “extraordinary” session this week. The session was anything but extraordinary. Lawmakers sat around in Albany for 36 hours while one party wrote the bill. In typical one-party-rule fashion, this was done under a “message of necessity” with bill language made available for the first time in the middle of the night. The normal three-day aging process for legislation was cast aside. The public was almost universally shut out.
Democrats in Albany are accustomed to getting their way. Why would anyone expect them to listen to the United States Supreme Court? As a result, they wasted little time scurrying to find workarounds in the wake of the landmark NYSRPA v. Bruen decision which struck down the state’s unconstitutional “proper cause” standard for the issuance of pistol permits. New York’s Governor and Legislature answered by drastically expanding “gun-free zones.” As one Senator remarked, this bill essentially makes the entire state of New York a gun-free zone. In remarkable fashion, they took this opportunity to go above and beyond simply thumbing their nose at the Supreme Court and expanded their attack on the Second Amendment to include everything from ammunition background checks, to point-of-contact status, to mandatory storage, among others.
The Majority Party initially said they were doing this to “comply” with Bruen, but in closing remarks those pretenses seemed to be dropped (or forgotten) when Senators began revealing their true motives. Sen. Robert Jackson (D-Washington Heights) said they were doing this to “counter” the Supreme Court. These actions almost certainly guarantee that New York will be back in front of the Supreme Court.
Today’s vote shows how little regard New York Democrats have for the rule of law and our institutions. This should come as little surprise, as the state has seen historic crime under a one-party-rule and bail “reform” in combination with anti- policing policies that have ceded control of the streets to criminals. Fortunately, New Yorkers will have a tremendous opportunity in November to replace Gov. Hochul and her cronies.
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