Gun Politics New York

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.

Fresh off signing A-2685/S-2449, the Governor wants to throw more money down this hole:

These “buybacks” are a waste of money and everybody knows it.

For reference see the 12/21/15 Daily News, “NYPD holding fewer gun buyback events,” and the 9/20/17 Buffalo News, “Gun buybacks get headlines, but there’s no evidence they reduce crime, researchers say.”