As I’m sure you’ve read, the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (NY SAFE, isn’t that adorable?) was passed by both houses of the state legislature and signed into law by Governor Cuomo this week. From the Buffalo News article, here are the highlights:
Assault weapons: Expands current ban on semiautomatic rifles.
Grandfather clause: Current owners may keep assault weapons but must register them for state database.
Private sales: Current owners cannot sell or give assault weapons in New York but may sell them out of state.
Background checks: Private gun buyers must undergo federal background check.
Ammunition: Magazines restricted to seven bullets, down from the present maximum of 10.
Mental health: Care professionals are required to report to authorities any of their patients who may pose a danger to themselves or to others; weapons may be seized from such people.
Tracking of sales: Real-time tracking for large purchases of ammunition.
Crimes: Stronger penalties for offenses committed with firearms.
Schools: Additional money for school safety.
The parts that are getting the most publicity, of course, are the restricted magazine sizes and the ban on semiautomatic rifles that have one or more “assault weapon” features (such as a collapsing stock or a flash suppressor).
I like some of this. The mental health reporting and expanded background checks make sense. But outlawing magazines or weapons seems silly to me; these types of weapons are used in a very small percentage of crimes, and this seems more likely to inconvenience legitimate users than anything else. It’s a silly, knee-jerk law that was pushed into service so Governor Cuomo could point at it when he starts his Presidential run in a couple of years and claim that he’s tough on crime.
There was a psychologist on NPR yesterday talking about how the mental health reporting was so vaguely worded it will be hard to maintain doctor patient confidentiatility without putting yourself at risk. That and the fact that it’s hard enough to get a delusional paranoid person to the doctor, it’s not likely to get easier if they know the doctor will report them to the police.
I, for one, am sure that any piece of legislation that is rapidly written in response to an emotionally jarring national tragedy and pushed through two deliberative bodies and signed by a thoughtful caring executive branch leader can only have positive repercussions.
Registration of firearms? Great idea! All the easier to round them up later when they decide to outlaw other types!
Magazine sizes: most of your popular handguns have 10 or 15 round clips. Requiring handgun owners to get rid of these and purchase new, 7 round clips is asinine. But it’ll be a boon to magazine manufacturers.
“Semi-automatic” is a term used by the media and politicians, and most of them have no clue what it means. Including NYC’s mayor. There’s actually video footage of him improperly using the term. A shotgun that fires one round for each pull of the trigger, without the need to re-cock after each shot, and holds 5 rounds, is a semiautomatic weapon. Almost every hunter I know has a weapon similar to this. Granted, it’s not a “rifle”, but there’s plenty of rifles that fall into this classification as well.
The mental health provisions are all well and good, but pretty much useless. Even the doctors and mental health experts that NPR has been trotting across its interview desk for the past month have all said so. And this butt fungus in CT got the weapons he used from his mother.
There are 300 million people in America and 300 million firearms of some type or another. Mix those all together, and the odds that at least one wack job is going to end up with a firearm at some point and go crazy with it somewhere are pretty high. Lawmakers would be better served spending their time wondering why so many people get struck and killed by lightning every year.
The thing that really annoys me is when some interviewer asks an NRA spokesperson or other “gun advocate” why they _NEED_ to have such-and-such type of firearm. The best response I heard from some woman (forget her name and affiliation) was this: The constitution does not contain a Bill of Needs. It contains a Bill of Rights. If the government were intended to legislate according to people’s Needs then most of what we own and do on a regular basis would be outlawed.
And that, friends, is what’s called communism.
“The thing that really annoys me is when some interviewer asks an NRA spokesperson or other “gun advocate” why they _NEED_ to have such-and-such type of firearm.”
Well, we can trade annoyances — it drives me bonkers when the gun fetishist being interviewed starts ranting about how the Second Amendment was put in place to protect the Good American People against the tyrannical actions of their own government. Because a bunch of hunting buddies with Red Dawn fantasies are totally going to overthrow Washington.
That said, I agree with you. I don’t need a curling iron. Doesn’t mean they should be outlawed. Unless people are running amok and trying to burn me with them, why would I care?
@matt,
I’ll agree with you, that in no way makes the firearm lobby appear in a good light. And I tend to favor them over the other side.
I think this goes to a broader issue I have with correct terminology and definitions. The language used in most of the public discourse in this country would make Noam Chompsky churn in his tomb (were he dead, that is), regardless of political affiliation.