Gun Safety
Do you support the SAFE Act?
[quote]CHRIS DAVIS
I do not support the SAFE Act; I want to repeal because it doesn’t do anything to get at the root of our gun violence problems: inner city violence and poor mental health. Half of all firearm deaths are suicide. Another large percentage are homicide in the inner cities, often related to crime, drugs, and gangs. The SAFE Act has become an administrative and really almost unenforceable nightmare on law enforcement.
To be clear, we have thousands of firearm regulations that we should already be following. We need to teach firearm responsibility. We need to stop the flow of illegal firearm caches entering the black market. I strongly support background checks, and ensuring these are performed at gun shows. Finally, we need to teach, and learn respect for the value of human life. It has seemingly been lost in the last 30 years.[/quote]
[quote]PAT FAHY
Yes. While I support the right for registered, law-abiding citizens to own guns, the SAFE Act helps strengthen background checks to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and those who may be dangerously mentally ill.[/quote]
[quote]JESSE CALHOUN
The SAFE Act was passed under a message of necessity, meaning that it was passed with no hearings, no testimony, no input from the public. It arrived on legislators desks and was voted on in the middle of the night. This is bad government any way you slice it. It was crafted by Cuomo so that he could appear “tough-on-guns” and potentially vie for the presidency at some point.
Gun laws are very similar to drug laws. Their intent is to limit the possession, but as I and many others who reside in reality know, these laws do absolutely nothing to limit possession. What these laws do instead is create a black market for drugs and guns. While leaving people like myself who abide by the laws, disarmed in the face of rising possession by violent criminals who don’t seem to care much about “laws” to begin with.
Have shootings decreased since the passage of this bill in the middle of the night? No. Shootings in NYC are up 45 percent this year. We have to stop judging bills by their intent and start judging them by their outcome. I do not support the safe act.
Guns are dangerous, and are a tool. They can be used properly for self-defense, or improperly for acts of aggression. The terms “crime-guns” or “assault-rifles” which have been mislabled to sound as scary as possible are a sort of propaganda technique. We don’t say that the actions of an arsonist were because he had access to “crime-fire” or “assault-fire.” To do so is to attach intent directly to an object instead of to a person. Intent comes from people. Not from objects.
With guns being dangerous they should be treated with the same respect as fire. Instead of pretending they don’t exist, we should cultivate a culture of gun-safety, just in the same way we do with fire safety.
We need to shift the focus off of the object, and start addressing the root causes of the violence in our society. This begins with learning empathy from an early age and not dropping it after preschool. It begins with healthy communication techniques being taught in schools. We can’t continue to ignore the violence. We have to address it and we should be prepared to deal with it if we are ever in a dangerous situation like the shooting in Orlando.
What we don’t hear are the stories about when mass shootings have been stopped by responsible gun-owners. Assistant Principal Joel Myrick stopped Luke Woodham after he had stabbed his mother and shot 2 children by pulling a .45 caliber pistol out of his truck. James Strand, owner of a banquet hall stopped a shooting during a school dance that killed a teacher. Students Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross stopped a shooting that had killed a dean and a teacher. There are more of these examples.
Shootings are dangerous situations where nobody wins, just like fires. For the same reason we need fire extinguishers and fire departments, we need responsible and safe gun-ownership amongst our society.[/quote]
[quote]NEIL BRESLIN
I voted in favor of the SAFE Act.[/quote]
[quote]PHIL STECK
Yes.[/quote]
What can be done about all the “crime guns” coming in from out-of-state?
[quote]NEIL BRESLIN
In light of the recent report issued by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, we must do more the keep illegal guns from entering our state. Seventy-four percent of all crime guns recovered by law enforcement across New York originated out-of-state and nearly nine out of ten of recovered handguns come from out-of-state. This is unacceptable. I agree with the findings and solutions outlined in the report. On a national level, Congress should require universal background checks and close the “gun show loophole;” make gun trafficking a federal crime; and make it easier for law enforcement to analyze crime gun data. On a state level New York should pass the Gun Kingpin Bill to punish traffickers so severely that the business becomes too risky.[/quote]
[quote]JESSE CALHOUN
We can run around all day long trying to stop “crime-guns” with little to no actual impact. We’ve already done this. From 1994 to 2004 there was a federal gun ban but Congress denied to renew it after studies showed it had no crime reducing impact.
Do we try to combat crime-bricks when a criminal smashes the window of a store and robs it?
Do we fight crime-fires when an arsonist sets one?
A much more reasonable way to hack at the root of the problem is to look at the causes of crime. Poverty, unemployment, our broken families, and the loss of teaching empathy and the difference between right and wrong.
As long as it remains easier for someone to commit crimes to provide for their families or themselves instead of working a job, they will continue to do so. Law enforcement should shift its focus away from pre-crimes and begin making actual, committed crimes the number one priority. Then our system needs to administer restorative justice instead of punitive justice to see that the people victimized are restored to the state before the crime happened to the best of the ability of the justice system.”[/quote]
[quote]PAT FAHY
We need stronger national laws to stop the pipeline of illegal guns into NYS. Law enforcement must work with partners in neighboring states to mitigate the sale and transfer of guns to individuals who should not have access to them in the first place. What happens in other states – particularly those with weak background checks – affects New York State, and we must adopt effective partnerships and tough sanctions to reduce criminal access to guns.[/quote]
[quote]PHIL STECK
That can only be accomplished effectively through federal legislation.[/quote]
[quote]CHRIS DAVIS
This is a tough situation. I think it starts with first strong border control at the national level. We know that drugs and guns ARE flowing in. Doesn’t take long to hit New York. I think we need to have our state police doing more truck inspections. We know ¾ of firearms used in crimes in NYS come from out of state. The rate of trafficking is overwhelming. We need to look at I-95, it’s a highway to bring in firearms. Now…to say if you legally own a firearm in one state, you can’t bring it across state lines, that is a federal issue. But much of the firearms being used are also illegal firearms. This is a national issue, minus our state police enforcement.[/quote]