New York, N.Y. (July 28, 2009)–Robert M. Morgenthau, who has served as district attorney for New York county since 1975, wrote the Wall Street Journal prior to last week’s failed attempt to pass a national-right-to-carry bill in the Senate. It failed by two votes.
We reprint Morgenthau’s comments in whole to show how elected officials twist and misrepresent the facts on concealed-carry laws to restrict gunowner’s rights.
The Journal’s readers took great exception to Morgenthau’s polemic. The link to the original story in the July 22 WSJ appears at the bottom of the story:
By Robert M. Morgenthau
You can be forgiven if you thought that Republicans are for states’ rights. The Republican Party’s 2008 platform insists that Congress should respect the limits imposed by the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that authority not granted to the federal government is reserved to the states. But for some Republicans, federal preemption of state authority seems just fine if it promotes the possession of guns.
That is the message of a bill sponsored by the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, John Thune of South Dakota. The bill, sprung on us as a proposed amendment to a pending defense appropriations bill, would overrule the laws in states like New York.
In New York, the state imposes careful restrictions on who may carry concealed firearms. With the Thune amendment, New York and other states would be obliged to recognize licenses from jurisdictions which choose to issue them practically for the asking.
For example, in Ohio and Missouri, virtually any resident without a criminal record or prior hospitalizations for mental illness can carry a gun. Under the Thune amendment, that Midwesterner could legally carry the gun straight into New York, despite New York’s more stringent rules.
It gets worse. States like Florida and Texas are willing to issue carry permits to nonresidents under policies just as lax as those of Ohio and Missouri. The Thune amendment would provide a legal backdoor to a New Yorker who does not qualify for a carry permit under New York’s state law. The undeserving local applicant could obtain a permit down South, and then be entitled by federal law to carry his concealed gun around New York.
This affront to states’ rights could not be more flagrant, particularly as it would come in a regulatory area that has always been the province of state and local governments. What happened to the Tenth Amendment?
Speaking from a policy perspective, the last thing New York needs is a federal rule that lets more guns into the state. About 85% of the gun crimes in New York City are committed with weapons smuggled in from those other states that make gun ownership easy. Federal action is needed to shut down the pipeline that brings these guns to our streets.
The Second Amendment may allow gun possession for home defense under some circumstances. But it provides no excuse for the kind of lax federal regulation of which the Thune amendment is just an instance. Nor is there any logical basis for another instance of lax federal law, the Brady law of 1993, which allows the sale of weapons at gun shows without even a minimal background check on the purchaser.
Moreover, the National Rifle Association’s paranoia, coupled with congressional cowardice, has resulted in absurd limits on the ability of law enforcement to examine the very inventory records that the law requires gun dealers to keep. That cripples the ability of the authorities to investigate violent gun crimes and illegal weapons dealing.
We need fewer guns on our streets, not more. Mr. Thune’s legislative ploy should be roundly rejected by Congress.
To read comments WSJ’s readers had on this article, click Here:
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