Gun Politics New York

The Times Union wonders, “Six years later, key SAFE Act database undone“:”

“… Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo touted New York’s tough anti-gun laws as a nationwide model during a radio interview on Monday. Cuomo did not mention that six years years after passage of the landmark SAFE Act, a key plank remains unimplemented: the state’s plan to build a database to track ammunition purchases in real time … Beau Duffy, a spokesman for the agency in charge of implementing the database, the New York State Police, said its completion remains a “priority.” Work on the database is ongoing in tandem with the state Office of Information Technology Services. “That work will continue until the database is realized,” Duffy said. “Connecting dealers with a state system is a significant hurdle, one that did not exist in California, since the infrastructure linking firearms dealers directly to the state was already in place.” … Cuomo’s public responses have suggested he’s not keeping close tabs of the database’s development. Asked about the holdup in a September 2018 meeting with the Times Union’s editorial board, Cuomo repeatedly said he was unaware of the progress on the project. “I don’t know. I will check,” Cuomo said. “But it is not a significant aspect of the SAFE Act.” … In September 2018, [Rich] Azzopardi told the Times Union that the State Police and ITS had “reviewed a number of technological solutions” to implement the database, and had been “unable to address the myriad of legal and operational implementation obstacles.” …”

I got the real reason for the delay from a friend who worked in the A.G.’s office.

The information they want to put into this database either doesn’t exist, or it exists only on paper or in an incompatible electronic format.  There’s no way to simply import this information into a new database. Furthermore, the Governor and legislature knew this beforehand but went ahead with the bill anyway. That is why he’s unconcerned about it.

With the Republicans in permanent minority status in Albany, all the loony gun control ideas will start coming to fruition in the state.  The 11 bills they passed this session is only the beginning.

Case in point is this op-ed by Cy Vance, “A new weapon against gun violence: Pass the Gun Kingpin bill now“:

“… Last month, my office and the NYPD took down a Washington Heights-based firearm ring charged with illegally selling 43 guns and more than 350 rounds of ammunition … it also lays bare the urgent need for New York lawmakers to strengthen penalties for wholesale gun traffickers … The indicted ringleader is accused of selling more than 40 guns … He is now charged with the state’s most serious statute for illegal sale of a firearm — a Class B felony. That is because, inexplicably, a person who sells 40 guns faces the same five-year minimum sentence as someone who sells 10 or 10,000 … I have proposed that the Legislature pass a new Gun Kingpin bill to establish the crime of “operating as a major firearms trafficker.” Under this statute, if you sell 20 or more firearms in the space of a year, the crime would be elevated from a Class B felony to an A-1 felony, which carries a penalty of up to 25 years to life in prison. This is the level of deterrence necessary to keep out-of-state guns from flooding our streets …”

People said the same thing about drugs and that’s been a decades long policy disaster.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, the City toughened laws relating to unlicensed firearms possession.

Was this a deterrent?

No.

Rather than admit he’s wrong, Vance wants replicate this failure with more laws he knows won’t work.

The bill in question is A-674 and there is no Senate companion.  We should be able to tell which new gun proposals the legislature will take up next year based upon what issues politicos like Vance start talking up in press conferences beforehand. It won’t be a one-off like this op-ed, but a co-ordinated effort with several of them talking it up at once.