Gun Politics New York

Another reporter appears to have realized that anger over Cuomo’s gun law isn’t going to go away.  Buffalo News Urban Affairs Editor Rod Watson writes:

“… In a nation founded with guns to oppose government tyranny, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that shooters won’t let Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s gun-control power play fade from the spotlight.  Tuesday’s rally in Albany and another slated for Feb. 28 prove that the issue has legs.  So does his drop in a poll after the law was rammed through using emergency provisions to prevent debate.  Put aside for a moment the irony of the governor now saying a law passed in secret will become more popular once people know more about it.  With other bills, that might be true.  But in this case, the more the public learns what a semiautomatic gun is – and what it isn’t – I’m betting the less likely they are to think Cuomo made a reasoned decision, rather than a political one …”

That’s what I told the Times more than two weeks ago:

“… “The more people see about this, the angrier they are getting,” said Jacob J. Rieper, the vice president of legislative and political affairs for the Rifle and Pistol Association.  He recounted sympathetic phone calls from as far away as Nebraska, where a man pledged to collect donations at his gun club to support a legal challenge to the law, and angry messages from New York gun owners who were eager to campaign against the legislators who voted for the measure.  “The bottom line is none of these people thought this through, and it’s starting to stink,” Mr. Rieper said …”

Yes it is.

Fred Dicker has a good column in today’s Post regarding Gov. Cuomo’s recent behavior:

“Gov. Cuomo has veered sharply away from the reform and pro-business policies he followed during his first two years in office and is “adrift’’ … insiders, some of whom have known Cuomo for decades, said the governor has become so obsessed with maintaining what until recently were record-high job-approval ratings that he has refused, for fear of alienating politically potent liberal voting blocs,  to make tough decisions … Cuomo signaled his new direction in a State of the State Address last month that was so devoid of serious, game-changing initiatives that he had to rely on two catastrophes — the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut and the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy — for its principle news-generating proposals … what support Cuomo still retained in Senate Republican ranks was badly damaged last month when he pressured Dean Skelos, the weakest GOP leader in modern times, to support a tough new anti-gun law that was so politically damaging that state GOP Chairman Ed Cox has publicly denounced it …”

Yep.  What neither Cuomo nor the GOP have yet to publicly acknowledge, assuming they’re even aware of it now, is the outrage over the SAFE Act isn’t going away.  A lot of people still do not understand what was passed into law and when they find out they get very angry.  It is going to bite Cuomo and the GOP in the ass eventually.