A long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I worked at Field & Stream magazine in Manhattan, at 1515 Broadway, or 7th Avenue and 44th. At the time, New York City’s gun rules were just as crazy and un-Constitutional as today, maybe worse, and were difficult to accept when the articles I edited nearly every day concerned firearms that couldn’t be possessed in the city. But I shot in NRA smallbore matches on Long Island and upstate in a Friday-night quarter-course league at West Point (which was awesome), so the strongest anti-gun sentiment didn’t extend very far into the ‘burbs. But that seems to be changing for the worse again.
New anti-gun laws from Albany have recently passed, and I’d expect Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to sign them. The measures further erode — negate, really — gunowners’ rights in the Empire State. It seems the hoplophobic disease that afflicted NYC so many years ago continues to spread upstate, and Gun Tests readers across New York State will be negatively affected.
In January, Democrats who control both houses of the state Legislature passed a big gun-control package that Tom King, executive director of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and a board member of the National Rifle Association called “very egregious” moves against gun rights or “just plain stupid.” He is right on the money.
The bills included: A ban on bump-stock devices; a law to create a uniform, statewide gun buyback program; a bill letting the state check the mental-health backgrounds of people who move to New York and want to purchase a gun; a ban on teachers’ gun possession at schools; and a bill that allows issue of “extreme risk protection orders.”
I won’t go into excruciating detail about each of these items; I will simply note how collectively wrong-headed they are. In particular, however, the bump-stock ban is stupid because the devices don’t improve a firearm’s ability to increase accurate aimed fire. Bump stocks only help increase the volume of fire, and certain trigger techniques and fabric loops can do the same thing. Allowing “extreme risk protection orders” without due process is a 4th Amendment violation, but such niceties don’t seem to matter any longer. If a state is willing to infringe on your 2nd Amendment rights, then taking your guns on the word of your anti-gun brother-in-law is easy-peasy.
And it’s only going to get worse. I truly feel for Gun Tests readers in New York State.
