PA Bill Number: SB1198
Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...
Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Last Action Date: May 17, 2024
America's center on gun control might shock New York :: 06/25/2015
Could New York City, where for all intents and purposes the Second Amendment doesn’t exist, play a role in the next national debate over guns?
Though last week’s tragedy in South Carolina would be the impetus for renewed debate over gun-control, New York might be influential in its outcome.
When President Obama speaks Friday at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor at the Charleston church targeted in the June 17 shooting, it’s unclear whether he’ll call for more gun control. It is clear, though, that the question is heating up again in Congress, where Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.VA.) are talking about making a new effort for tighter background checks.
The two senators are both advocates of gun control who’ve been frustrated by the refusal of Congress to act, even after the 2012 killings in Newtown, Conn. The Washington Post reports that in the wake of Charleston, Manchin wants to focus on keeping guns “out of the hands of people diagnosed with mental illness.”
That seems like a reasonable ambition, even to many staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. It’s hard to imagine that anybody — even the National Rifle Association — wants a person who is mentally unstable walking around with a pistol.
Manchin has had a tough time pressing the issue in Congress, though. My guess is that this is because, broadly speaking, the Second Amendment camp is unwilling to tighten the rules anywhere unless they’re going to be made more reasonable in places where gun rights don’t exist.
New York City is Exhibit A. Michael Bloomberg long claimed to be a big supporter of the Second Amendment. What he’s against, he likes to say, is “illegal guns.” But, save for a very few persons, all guns being carried are illegal in New York City.
There’s a widespread view that different states and cities ought to have some wiggle room in how to regulate guns. But New York City takes such a hard line that the Second Amendment just doesn’t apply. Call it a .22 caliber catch-22.
So I wonder if there’s a compromise here. The gun-control camp gets better background checks to guard against persons with mental illness carrying guns. And the Second Amendment camp gets legislation that says permits must be issued to persons who are sane.
Democrats could follow the lead of Craig Whitney. He lives in Brooklyn and must be among the sanest citizens in the city. He’s a centrist. He worked for one company, The New York Times, his entire career. He tells me he’s never been arrested — or even ticketed.
Whitney served in the Navy, where he was a military policeman and, in Vietnam, carried a .45 sidearm. Yet he’s thunderstruck he needs a permit to exercise his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
After all, he needs no permit to exercise his First Amendment rights at the Times. So why should he need a permit for his Second Amendment right? Whitney wrote an entire book on the subject: “Living with Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.”
Is there no politician in New York prepared to pick up the Whitney challenge?
There are at least two bills in Congress now that would require states to honor concealed-carry permits issued in another state. One of these reciprocity bills, HR 986, would go so far as to allow persons denied permits to sue for damages.
The bill, at last check, has 176 co-sponsors, including six from New York’s congressional delegation. They include the brilliant upstate freshman, Elise Stefanik, who strikes me as one, though not the only one, who could take a lead on this issue.
At the moment, New York authorities who refuse gun permits to even the sanest citizens stand as a warning to Congress that opponents of guns will take a mile if given an inch. It’s a disincentive for Congress to pass any gun-control measures at all.
Whether or not President Obama speaks on gun control in Charleston, his window for leadership on the issue is rapidly closing.
If the GOP keeps Congress and wins the White House next year, Congress could yet override the ability of states and cities simply to defy the Second Amendment.
http://nypost.com/2015/06/24/americas-center-on-gun-control-might-shock-new-york/
