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Home » Hochul and the New York legislature have a strange way of “keeping New Yorkers safe”

Hochul and the New York legislature have a strange way of “keeping New Yorkers safe”

The New Neo Posted on by

SCOTUS had struck down New York’s earlier restrictive concealed carry law, so in July the legislature passed another one, which took effect on September 1. This is what Hochul is referencing; she’s not just doing this by executive decree:

The [newly-passed] laws contain strengthened background checks and firearm safety and live-fire training for individuals seeking to obtain concealed carry permits; prohibit concealed carry permit holders from bringing their firearms into sensitive locations, including Times Square, bars, libraries, schools, government buildings and hospitals, among others; and require renewal or recertification of permits every three years. The Governor also announced a new Gun Safety Website to provide the public, gun owners, and gun dealers with a comprehensive information about all of the new requirements under state law.

“In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down New York’s century-old concealed carry law, we took swift and thoughtful action to keep New Yorkers safe,” Governor Hochul said. “I refuse to surrender my right as Governor to protect New Yorkers from gun violence or any other form of harm. In New York State, we will continue leading the way forward and implementing common sense gun safety legislation.”

I have no objection to requiring training of various kinds. It’s the restrictions in “sensitive locations” that are the problem. Unless every single one of those locations has an entrance protected by armed guards and metal protectors blocking entrance by all gun carriers, legal or illegal – and of course that is not going to be the case – the laws protect no one except “bad guys” intent on flouting them.

It seems obvious that a gang member or a thief or a murderer is not a law-abiding citizen, and gun laws mean nothing to such a person.

This is the brilliant approach adopted by the Democrats of New York; the quote is from Mayor Eric Adams:

“We will be posting signage at every entrance into Times Square informing those traveling through that the area is a gun-free zone and that licensed gun carriers and others may not enter with a gun unless otherwise specially authorized by law. As mayor of New York City and a former police officer, my top priority will always be the safety of all 8.8 million people who call this city home, so while the Supreme Court decision may have opened an additional river feeding the sea of gun violence, we are doing everything we can to dam it and keep New York the safest big city in America,” he added.

I don’t see why this law would have any effect on the “river feeding the sea of gun violence,” except to increase it. In addition, a lot of New York’s increased violence – for example, pushing people onto subway tracks, or beating them up – does not feature guns.

Hochul said this:

We don’t need guns on our streets. We don’t need people carrying guns in our subways. We don’t need people carrying guns in our schools. We don’t need people carrying in our places of worship. We don’t need them carrying them into bars or restaurants. Because that only makes people less safe,” Hochul said Wednesday.

You may not need them, but you will get them, because criminals are not deterred by laws such as this. Earth to Hochul, Adams, and the New York legislature: there is a black market in guns, and criminals engage in it. As long as criminals have guns and armed police are not always around, to disarm the law-abiding citizens seems like madness.

However, there’s a clue in Hochul’s statement that legal concealed carry “only makes people less safe.” I would amend that to “it makes some people feel less safe.” When I see a sign that a certain area I’m about to enter is a gun-free zone, unless it’s protected by the aforementioned metal detector with an armed guard (courtrooms are a good example), I don’t feel the least bit safe. I feel like a sitting duck. But I am pretty certain that a sizeable number of people do feel more safe when they see signs like that. It is a kind of safety-theater, a pretense of protection.

As governor and then before that lieutenant governor, Hochul has state trooper protection as security. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she’s not planning to disarm them.

Comments

Hochul and the New York legislature have a strange way of “keeping New Yorkers safe” — 51 Comments

  1. No case for “stricter gun control” can be made on empirical grounds. There are some 20,000 firearms laws (estimated) on the books, yet none of them has significantly reduced crime.

  2. So, sick people intent on violence, like the supermarket shooter in Buffalo, can continue to target New York locations, secure in the knowledge that no civilians will shoot back at them.

  4. I think the very first and last ones on their list are the real target.

    Public Transportation limitations in NY mean good luck being a resident of the city and having a permit. You simply will now be allowed to move around the city.

    As for “public demonstrations and rallies” To me on its face seems overly broad. Simply walking down the street an other people deciding to “demonstrate” now nullifies your right to carry the weapon you already have on you? Its an impossible standard to follow.

    Most other states have some of the rest of these restrictions on their lists. But NY is the first I have seen with ALL of them

  6. The talk along these lines seems to involve only the concealed-carry laws or permit holders, as I understand it. What of open-carry permit holders, if there even are any such people in this state? Am I misunderstanding or is this entire discussion irrelevant to them?

  7. Philip,
    One probably needs to be a cop or gov. agent to open carry in NY. Often states opt for either open or concealed carry for citizens, but not both. I think one or the other is required by the Heller decision. I believe some open minded states have open carry for everyone, and concealed by license.

  8. I agree with Neo on what feels safer. I’ve been to a number of outdoor music events this season and the one that feels the least safe to me is the crowded mall event with mall security people armed only with walkie-talkies.

    A different event with blocked off city streets featured real cops with side-arms and several with slung AR-15’s. Much better.
    _____

    I don’t carry, but those who do complain about the hassle of storing the firearm just prior to entering a gun-free zone. Usually, it involves storing the firearm in the car and then re-concealing it on your person upon return to the car. The less responsible may put the gun in a glove box, but the safety conscious will make the effort to install a steel car safe bolted to the chassis for storage.

  9. So a person planning to kill other people (which is apparently still a crime in NY), will be deterred by fear of breaking the concealed carry law? Ya, shore, yabetcha.

  10. I read Hochul’s words and the only thing that comes to mind is the voice of an annoying elementary school administrator.

  11. So a person planning to kill other people (which is apparently still a crime in NY), will be deterred by fear of breaking the concealed carry law? Ya, shore, yabetcha.

    Again, Hochul thinks like a dippy schoolteacher. The point of the rule is not to accomplish anything, but to help teacher manage her emotions and provide an outlet for her impulse to pester people.

  12. @ Mythx > “As for “public demonstrations and rallies” To me on its face seems overly broad. Simply walking down the street an other people deciding to “demonstrate” now nullifies your right to carry the weapon you already have on you? Its an impossible standard to follow.”

    I agree with your observation, but am not seeing that specific restriction in Neo’s post of the NY website she linked.
    Do you have a direct link so I can file that in my “stupid things Democrats do” folder?

    BTW – you can get that official declaration in any one of 12 languages.
    Not including Japanese, German, any Scandinavian language, or Portuguese, which I think is rather curious.

  13. It looks like you can still concealed carry and eat and drink at bars (???) and restaurants that don’t serve alcohol.
    Probably therefore also includes hot dog stands and other street food vendors?

    So conceal carry your weapon and open carry your hotdog or taco, and you are good to go!!

  14. @ jvermeer > “a person planning to kill other people (which is apparently still a crime in NY)”

    Not really.
    Both are different alleged perps; representative rather than being the only ones.

    https://nypost.com/2021/09/22/murder-suspect-released-under-nys-parole-reform-law-re-arrested-hours-later/

    https://illicitdeeds.com/2022/08/man-sentenced-to-20-years-to-life-for-new-york-murder-was-released-and-allegedly-killed-again/

    https://nypost.com/2021/12/30/nyc-murders-in-2021-to-near-500-for-first-time-in-a-decade/

    https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-violence-increase-nypd-20220805-4cgeyby5gjdthhnf6pb7qrsor4-story.html

  15. <"We don’t need guns on our streets. We don’t need people carrying guns in our subways. We don’t need . . . " [Hochul]

    Anytime someone reduces an argument to “need” they are arguing from socialism (“to each according to his need”).

    Notice we don’t see such arguments for 75 inch OLED TVs or BMWs, or dishwashers, or video games; no one NEEDS those, either. They use such specious arguments as pseudo defenses against things they personally don’t like.

    Furthermore, with 300 million to 600 million firearms in private hands, if law abiding citizens were the problem, we would know it.

  17. Propaganda and virtue signaling. Any enforcement of this new law, and its restrictions, comes from the individual. Is that list of sensitive places in the law or does the governor and mayor get to decide which places are on the list? Creating and publishing that list effectively creates target areas for criminals.

    NY politicians: fools or knaves?

  18. I am not sure how they can limit “houses of worship.” Those are privately owned, and outside of incorporation and tax laws, are not subject to oversight by government. Restaurants and bars need permits and regular inspections to operate, and so can be beholden to politicians in office in a way houses of worship don’t (or shouldn’t) have to be.

    With the anti-semitism today, if I were a rabbi or congregation leader, I’d want some of my congregants carrying. If I were attending services, I’d feel safer knowing that there probably were some.

    But I suppose her response is that they’ll have to shell out money to hire guards, if they want any armed protection.

    At least with concealed carry, it’s not obvious who a mass shooter would need to target first.

  19. Without firearms, people are vulnerable to those who are physically stronger and more experienced at fighting (generally male, often former prisoners). They are also far more vulnerable to mobs.

  20. “As long as criminals have guns and armed police are not always around, to disarm the law-abiding citizens seems like madness.”

    aren’t the police part of the criminals in New York?

  23. It will be OK. Black criminals, usually drug dealers. have “license” to use their illegal firearms against each other. Population-sanitzing.
    Whities do not have to worry much about being shot by other whities.

  24. “I am pretty certain that a sizeable number of people do feel more safe when they see signs like that. It is a kind of safety-theater, a pretense of protection.”
    I’m sure, too – virtue signaling.

    Certainly among the rich who don’t ride the subways or go to the dangerous drug warfare zones, but likely even among most college educated elite wannabees.

    For normal New Yorkers, what’s the difference between 1 in 10,000 (gun control) vs 1 in 20,000 (legal carry)? Even tho with gun laws it’s twice as risky, it’s still very low risk. Vast majority of NY White Dems won’t have a loved one or close friend killed, with or without gun control.

    But their friends WILL be watching for safety-theater & virtue signaling. If you don’t want to be “deplorable” — you know what views to have.

  26. Some possible combinations:

    She believes herself. Almost everybody else thinks she’s a flaming idiot. Except the people who voted for her who think this will solve the problem.

    She’s lying like a rug and thinks people believe her intentions.

    She’s lying like a rug and doesn’t care that most people think she’s lying like a rug and actually wants the actual as opposed to the lying-like-a-rug promised results.

    She knows she’s insulated from the effects on the public of her policies.

    So, given those possibilities, how did someone so mendacious and/or stupid get elected?

  27. Those “gun free zone” signs are just an “open season” sign for the criminals. In Arizona there are no car jackings because so many people are armed. The only none I’ve heard of since I’ve lived here (5 years) was the Mayor, a Democrat, in front of his home.

  28. Richard Aubrey:

    Hochul didn’t get elected governor. She came along for the ride as lieutenant governor when Cuomo chose her, and then she stayed with him and became governor when he resigned. This will be her first run for the governorship.

  29. I live in Boise, Idaho. Idaho is an open carry state, but I went ahead and got a CCW permit anyway. There are practically no restrictions on where you can carry. Yet Idaho is one of the places you are least likely to ever have to use your weapon. Must be because of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan quipped about with regard to school test scores: proximity to Canadian border.

  30. New York restrictions on concealed carry are onerous. The effect is that people will not, lawfully, be able to conceal carry a handgun. So yes, everyone is less safe.

    Imagine, if you will, a jurisdiction where nearly everyone carries a concealed pistol. What would be the outcome if a person starts shooting people? It would be over quickly with the dumb ass dead or mortally wounded.

    People that get a concealed carry license are very careful to both follow the letter of the law and to keep their pistol hidden. These idiots in NY will reap what they have sown. Of course, it won’t be them that actually suffer but the people they supposedly serve.

  31. Must be because of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan quipped about with regard to school test scores: proximity to Canadian border.

    Canada is going to have to institute knife control, if today’s bad news is any indication: “The Saskatchewan RCMP says 10 people have been killed and another 15 are injured following a stabbing spree that took place in the communities of James Smith Cree Nation and Weldon. It is the deadliest homicide event in the history of the province. . . . The RCMP says the suspects are believed to be in a black Nissan Rogue with Saskatchewan license plate 119 MPI. They do however say they don’t know if they have changed vehicles.”

    https://www.cjme.com/2022/09/04/784927/

  32. Neo. True about riding the coat tails. But I suppose Kamala Harris proves that, no matter what you do, the second in command choice does not pull down the ticket.

    But my point is that she should have been poison. Harris was a nobody, more or less, running nationally. But Hochul is or should have been known in the state and, instead of Harris’ more or less nothingness, must have been obviously a total loser with a public persona considerably more obvious within the state than Harris’ was within the nation.

    As, I suppose, a separate issue, Hochul looked at the political parties and preferred what she saw in the dems.

    But, I suspect, she’ll be elected.

  33. no, that’s not evidence at all, remember they stole strategically in a number of cities, which we won’t belabor the point,

  35. @ Snow > “The “Citizens for Sanity” anti-crime ad”

    Red State has the story as well, with some quotes from the ad.
    Both force you to click on the group’s Tweet rather than running the ad themselves, and Twitter has a content warning on it, so I didn’t bother looking because I don’t talk to Twitter.

    https://redstate.com/levon/2022/09/04/watch-brilliant-ad-by-citizens-for-sanity-if-this-doesnt-encourage-people-to-vote-nothing-will-n622495

  36. But my point is that she should have been poison.

    The quasi-elective Lt. Governor’s position is rather like that of the federal Vice President. It’s a 5th wheel job which ought to be eliminated. Ideally, VPs and Lt. Governors would be appointed and given portfolios of state agencies to supervise, and would succeed to the chief executive’s job for a circumscribed period of time until an electoral college could choose a new chief executive. We don’t do things that way because reasons.

    Over the last 60 years, Lt. Governors in New York have had various dispositions. Malcolm Wilson was permitted to practice law on the side. Mary Ann Krupsak had a falling out with Gov. Carey and eventually challenged him in a primary. Mario Cuomo was not on the best terms with Gov. Carey, but Carey was ready to retire and Cuomo successfully used the office to make a name for himself. Alfred delBello got bored with the job almost immediately, resigned, and left the state. Stanley Lundine took a position on the ticket like a good soldier and had an ambition to run for governor in 1994, but Downstate pols scotched that by persuading Cuomo to run for another term. Betsey McCaughey had a raucous falling out with George Pataki and his lout crew and attempted to challenge him by changing parties and running for their nomination. Bernadette Castro was a notable party donor willing to be a good soldier. David Patterson was a legacy pol good soldier who was unexpectedly thrust into the governorship. He proved to be the most-public spirited governor since Carey, so, of course, the voting public and the pols in New York despised him and he shuffled off at the end of his term. Andrew Cuomo’s first Lt. Governor was Robert Duffy, the business-as-usual-low-voltage-failure of a mayor from Rochester. Duffy evidently decided he had other things to do with his life and declined to be on the ticket again. It’s really a stupid job, which is why the people who work out well in it have no ambition but to get vested for or improve their state pension.

    Hochul practiced law for less than a year. For 38 years, she’s either been on the staff of an elected official or been an elected official herself. This has included a brief tour in Congress (she was chosen in a fluke special election in a Republican district and bounced the next regular election) and a run of years as a suburban town councillor and county clerk. She was, without a doubt, put on Cuomo’s ticket because (1) you can’t run without and Lt. Gubernatorial candidate and (2) she was content with the position as is and wasn’t going to cause trouble. She’s been involved in the Democratic Party at least avocationally since 1978 or thereabouts when she was a student at Syracuse and the evidence strongly suggests that from a young age she rejected the signature features of her frugal Catholic natalist upbringing. The two things you can say in her favor are that she’s eschewed the divorce courts and when she had minor children she stuck to jobs available around Buffalo (as did her husband). (Her husband and her children and her daughter-in-law are ensconced in the nomenklatura as we speak).

  37. I just came back from NY state. It is hard to realize how utterly different the people there really think. How they are so hostile to people that have more conservative beliefs than them. I just kept my mouth shut. They dont have a problem with Hoschul. At least in my interactions with them.

  38. Art, that’s very interesting about Gov. Hochul’s background. Thanks for that. I’d thought she was a teacher or something for a little while.

    As for the new gun law, another place to lay blame, besides Hochul for signing it, is the state legislature for whipping it up and passing it so quickly. I wonder if the upstate reps were even afforded time to read it before the vote – not that it would have mattered, I suppose, since they don’t have the numbers. In any event, certainly the criminal classes of New Yorkers will be “safer” as a result of its passage.

  40. LeClerc
    And the question is whether they have that figured out or actually think they’re doing the right thing.
    Or whether their opinion is meaningless because they’re being coerced in some way, financial, blackmail, physical, career.
    Or maybe degrading New York strikes them as a great idea because of what comes next….

  41. Sgt. Joe Friday,

    Idaho has the highest rate of gun ownership in the nation. It also has the lowest rate of gun violence. Which produces a high risk to low reward ratio, resulting in those inclined to violence facing the certainty of a well armed populace.

    It also has the highest % of whites (monoculture). Whereas, Wash. DC has the lowest rate of gun ownership and the highest rate of gun violence. It also has the highest percentage of blacks in its population. To paraphrase; It’s the culture, stupid…

    Art Deco,

    “The quasi-elective Lt. Governor’s position is rather like that of the federal Vice President. It’s a 5th wheel job which ought to be eliminated.”

    It is generally treated as a 5th wheel job but at least in the case of the VP should neither be treated as one nor eliminated. The VP should be treated as an ‘understudy’ sympatico with the President’s policies, ready to seamlessly take over at a moment’s notice. For instance, if a President suddenly drops dead of a heart attack or is otherwise incapacitated.

    Instead, VP selection is typically decided upon their political usefulness to the ticket. But then we rarely, if ever choose Presidents based upon merit either.

    In the aggregate, the degree of maturity, common sense and acumen of the voters is reflected in their elected representatives. Sad.

  42. I see some here are still clinging to the delusional, Ukraine is winning propaganda.

    What’s of greater import is whether, should events disprove long held assumptions, an admitted acknowledgement of error will ever be forthcoming.

    The irony is Shakespearean, a prideful refusal to admit to error ensures the continuance of their self-imposed mental imprisonment.

  43. Geoffrey Britain:

    Physician, heal thyself.

    By the way, I don’t think anyone here has said that Ukraine is winning, just that the war is going on in its murky way with no clear outcome, but that Russia certainly hasn’t won either – except in the sense of being able to sell its fossil fuels to the highest bidder, and the sanctions against Russia having no effect in that regard.

    Europe should have heeded Trump’s warning about dependence on Russian fuel, instead of chortling at him.

  44. The VP should be treated as an ‘understudy’ sympatico with the President’s policies, ready to seamlessly take over at a moment’s notice. For instance, if a President suddenly drops dead of a heart attack or is otherwise incapacitated.

    No need for a dedicated understudy who has no administrative responsibilities. If you’re not going to have a corps of VPs supervising federal agencies, one of the president’s cabinet secretaries can take over for a period sufficient in duration for the state legislatures to elect a new president. The same procedure can be followed at the state level.

    Instead, VP selection is typically decided upon their political usefulness to the ticket. But then we rarely, if ever choose Presidents based upon merit either.

    See Wm. Schneider on public opinion research and the VP selection. Per Schneider, they’ve estimated that the VP candidate will net you 2% of the vote in the VP candidate’s home state, so their isn’t much point in old-school ticket balancing from the perspective of electoral mobilization. Tim Kaine would have been useful for Hellary to secure a purple state, but he wasn’t a bad candidate for VP for the purposes you have in mind. Neither was Pence or Cheney, both of whom were experienced executives. Bad selections were Kamala Harris, Biden, Dan Quayle, and Geraldine Ferraro. In re Harris and Ferraro, the presidential nominee was placating influentials (Judy Goldsmith and Tip O’Neill in the case of Ferraro, James Clyburn in the case of Harris). Biden’s selection one can surmise was a function of Obama’s avoidance of people whose presence underlines his superficiality and weightlessness. The selection of Quayle was a function of Bush the Elder’s indifference to the exercise; he picked someone a couple of his aides had been touting, not realizing the man had some embarrassing shortcomings.

  45. I see some here are still clinging to the delusional, Ukraine is winning propaganda.

    I don’t think if Mr. ‘om’ elects to assemble a compendium of statements you’ve made on this subject over the last seven months that you’re going to look perspicacious.

  46. In the aggregate, the degree of maturity, common sense and acumen of the voters is reflected in their elected representatives. Sad.

    Elections tell you, in a rough way, what people will put up with, and what they put up with is regrettable. The thing is, the social dynamics on the supply side are more consequential. What sort of people are attracted to the political world and remain within it? Well, have a gander at Jen Psaki.

  47. GB. Wrt Ukraine and Russia. In a sense, one sense, exploded expectations can be considered at least a partial win. This was supposed to be over in, if not days, maybe a couple of weeks.

    Russia is using up stocks they’ll have to replace, both human and material, with an economy described as a gas station with nukes. Right not, the gas station thing is going well for them.

    Their preparation and the performance of their equipment have been shown to be pretty crappy.

    Even if they eventually win on the battlefield, the result will be worse than if they’d stayed home–that happens a lot–and done things the civilized way.
    They will be shown to be a threat to a much weaker neighbor who may not have the same connections to the west’s sympathies as Ukraine does. And nothing else, saving their nukes.

    Such organization of the oligarchy–those who’ve managed to avoid windows–as remains will likely not be as efficient until some time passes and the survivors figure out a new way of operating which includes increased security which cannot be infiltrated by the FSB. Luck with that. And there goes part of their economy.

    Meantime, those claiming Russia was not a threat and defensive preparations are sinful–they’ve never gotten over the end of the communists–have a harder row to hoe.

    It’s hard to tell what proportion of Russian unity in WW II was emotional due mostly to yet another invasion and what part to coercion. But the former was likely not inconsequential. De-nazifying Ukraine isn’t coming up with enough actual nazis to get people fired up, and Ukraine’s only actual crime against Mother Russia was preparing not to be easily invaded. Harder to gin up a spirit of sacrifice than in earlier efforts.

    It’s important to remember that, in the Pyrrhic victory, Pyrrhus actually won. For Putin, that would be a best-case In the current struggle….is there such a thing as a Pyrrhic defeat?

    Pshrinking Putin is difficult. He was willing to kill 200 Russians in a false-flag to generate support for an invasion of Chechnya. Yet, after the Beslan massacre…can’t find he did anything notable.

    As Sowell said, in his “Intellectuals and War”, presuming the opposition is rational and sees things as you do and would necessarily act rationally as you see rationality is stupid.

  48. Geoffrey Britain:

    I don’t know if Ukraine is winning. Fog of war, you know.

    I know the 13 minutes was BS from the get go and your man Vlad is no friend to the US much less the west. Europe is preparing for winter, restarting coal plants, restarting nukes, tightening their belts as it were.

    You have already surrendered, faintly now bleating “NATO, Davos, and Schwab, Oh my.”

    So put your willfull blindness where the feints don’t shine.

    Ukraine is still fighting your man Vlad.

  51. Considering that Adams’ competition for safest big city is L.A. and Chicago, isn’t the trophy like a participation award?

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