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Hochul displays anti-gun hypocrisy for all to see

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The right to keep and bear arms is just that, a right. This means that in order to curtail it, it’s on the other side to show definitively that such curtailment is absolutely necessary.

We shouldn’t have to show anything to justify keeping our rights. Yet all too often, that’s precisely what we have to do. We’re forced to show how concealed carry doesn’t lead to increase shootings or how gun ownership doesn’t correspond to higher homicide rates.

Yet New York Gov. Kathy Hochul displays all the hypocrisy one should expect from the anti-gun side of things.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she doesn’t “need to have numbers” to back up her strict gun control proposals.

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Speaking at a press briefing Wednesday, Hochul said after the high court overturned the law, gun owners would carry more.

A reporter then asked whether Hochul had any data to support her gun control push.

“Do you have the numbers to show that it’s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes? Because the lawful gun owner will say that you’re attacking the wrong person, that it’s really the people getting the guns illegally that are causing the violence not the people going and getting the permit legally. Do you have the numbers?”

“I don’t need to have numbers. I don’t need to have a data point to say this. I know that I have a responsibility to the people of this state to have sensible gun safety laws, and this one was not devised by the Hochul administration. It comes out of an administration from 1908. I don’t need a data point to say I have a responsibility to protect the people of this state.”

This is a constitutionally protected right, one that specifically states that it shall not be infringed, and she’s going to stand there and say she doesn’t need to provide evidence that her proposals are absolutely necessary?

Like hell she doesn’t.

I vehemently oppose any infringement on any of our rights, but I get that many people don’t feel the same way. However, at a minimum, people should demand lawmakers show some kind of evidence that any curtailment of those rights is absolutely necessary.

Yet Hochul stood there and said she didn’t need to do any such thing.

She says she has a responsibility to protect the people of New York, but where’s the evidence that this actually will? Where’s the evidence that gun control actually does protect the people of a given state. As we’ve already seen, much of the “evidence” out there is suspect.

But Hochul won’t even provide that to defend her assertion that gun control is absolutely necessary.

I’d ask why the mainstream media isn’t hammering her for this, but I already know why. They asked the question, sure, but there doesn’t seem to have been any outcry from them.

Which would have been a different case entirely if this had been about infringing on freedom of the press and we all know it.

What they don’t get is that curtailments of the Second Amendment will inevitably lead to curtailments of all other freedoms.

Meanwhile, they’ll try and put the onus on us to present evidence as to why we shouldn’t have our rights curtailed when that’s really not how any of this should work.

Honestly, there’s enough hypocrisy to go around. It’s not just Hochul.

Fox News: No correlation between gun ownership, murder rates

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For ages now, we’ve been told that high gun ownership correlates to a higher homicide rate. In fact, most in the media and on the anti-Second Amendment side of the debate take this as gospel truth and never bother to question it.

But is there any reality to it?

Well, Fox News took a look at it and found the answer was “no.”

Calls have rung out across the nation demanding gun control laws in a bid to curb violent crimes such as the recent series of mass shootings. Data, however, show that in states with higher percentages of households with at least one gun, crimes are not higher than in states with strict gun laws.

“Gun ownership is higher in states with fewer restrictions, and homicide rates in these states are lower. People can protect themselves,” George Mason University Professor Emerita Joyce Lee Malcolm told Fox News Digital of what she’s found through her research. Malcolm pointed to a study on burglars from 1986 that found 34% of burglars interviewed reported “to having been scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.”

Fox News Digital compiled FBI data from 2019 detailing murders and gun murders per 100,000 population for most states, as well as assembled Rand Corporation data released in 2020 showing the percentage of households with at least one firearm in 2016. The data does not reflect the skyrocketing violent crimes of 2020 and likely undercounts the current percentages of homes with at least one firearm as it does not reflect the influx of Americans who rushed to arm themselves in 2020.

The data show that many states with higher percentages of gun ownership had lower or similar murder and gun murder rates to states with strict gun control. Montana and Wyoming came in the top spots for states with the highest percentages of gun ownership, with more than 66% of households with at least one firearm. However, the states also saw murder and gun murder rates similar to states with strict gun laws.

Pretty interesting, don’t you think?

See, the truth of the matter is that even where a correlation exists, the question must be asked as to why such a correlation exists. Is the murder rate the result of so many guns? Or are so many guns the result of the murder rate?

And that correlation isn’t close to universal. Looking at a list of states by rates of gun ownership–an imprecise list, to be sure, but work with me here–then comparing it to a list of states by murder rates and you will see some similarities, sure, but you’ll also note some very profound differences.

That tells you that there’s something else going on.

However, there appear to be too many “researchers” who really just use the title in an attempt to hide their partisanship. They won’t take a deeper look at what’s going on here because it’s easier and more politically convenient to claim this correlation is real and significant.

Well, it’s not.

I’d say, though, that at least we now have information to refute it, but we all know anti-gunners will dismiss this because it’s Fox News, which is a shame.

It doesn’t change the truth, though.

New York Times opinion editor wants a gun

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The New York Times isn’t exactly a right-leaning publication. On its pages through the years, the official line seems to have been that guns are bad and have no place in our society.

Granted, they can’t do much beyond pontificate about how they know better than the rest of us, but they do that in spades.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a headline, written by the New York Times opinion editor, about why she wants a gun.

I lived in New York for a decade without fearing for my personal safety. But in recent months, I have been terrified. In May, I filed for and received a temporary order of protection against a former partner.

More than five million American women alive today have reported being threatened with a gun, shot or shot at by an intimate partner, and more than half of the perpetrators of mass shootings in the past decade shot a family member, intimate partner or former intimate partner as part of their rampage. Every month, 70 women on average are shot and killed by an intimate partner. But states like mine make it legally cumbersome to defend yourself with a legally purchased handgun.

If my life is ever in danger, I want to be able to protect myself with a gun. And now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, I am one step closer to carrying one.

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It is exhausting to live in fear of someone who knows your habits showing up at your door. My former partner refused to accept the end of our relationship. As I detailed in my petition for an order of protection, for the better part of the past year, he has sent alarming and frequent messages to me, my family and friends through a number of platforms. Even after I asked him not to contact me and my loved ones, he reached out to my family and friends and asked them to persuade me to speak with him. This sort of controlling and obsessive behavior is alarming enough on its own, but also has made me fear what else he is capable of.

In April, he printed out dozens of photos of me and friends, and recorded a YouTube video of himself slowly flipping through them while reciting a poem he’d written. I broke down sobbing; it felt like there was no escape. For the next several weeks, fearful that he would show up at my home, I slept with a sheathed hiking knife under my pillow. My friends made fun of me for doing so, and with good reason: Even if my harasser had managed to enter my apartment and threaten my life, what was I going to do? Go Rambo on a man practically twice my size?

Laura E. Adkins, the opinion editor for the New York Times, sounds like a lot of other women out there.

The truth is, she was right to be concerned about whether the hunting knife would be enough. Also in truth, it probably wouldn’t have unless she happened to surprise him with it.

And that’s the reality for countless women.

Meanwhile, the most effective tool for them to use to defend themselves? It’s a firearm, the very same thing many such women are told explicitly not to get. “He’ll just take it from you and use it on you,” they might say.

However, I’ve always found that reasoning suspect.

For one thing, if he intends to harm her, she’s already at a huge disadvantage and is already likely to be killed. Yet having a gun may dissuade her attacker or, at least, allow her to stop him from injuring or killing her. That should be a win in anyone’s book.

Plus, the main way he’d be likely to take the gun from her is if she refuses to pull the trigger. If he’s a threat, she shouldn’t have any such refusal.

Now, Adkins isn’t really “one of us.” She goes on to applaud the bipartisan gun control deal, for example, but she’s also one of a growing number of liberals who are finding their way toward gun ownership. It’s especially interesting because, as I can’t mention enough, she’s the opinion editor for the New York Times.

That’s not the kind of person I expected to write what is, for the most part, a fairly pro-gun op-ed. I find it kind of refreshing, in that regard, I only wish she wasn’t dealing with such a horror in the first place.

New York gun group promises swift response to new carry restrictions

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Full disclosure: I was hoping to share an interview that I conducted with Tom King, the executive director of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co but the internet ate my homework. Thanks to technical issues I can’t share the video of our conversation, but I can at least relay what Tom told me about the group’s anticipated response to New York Democrats’ attempt to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSPRA v. Bruen by passing a host of new restrictions on the right to carry, including widespread bans on carrying in publicly accessible spaces, onerous new training requirements, and more.

King says NYSPRA is ready to go back to court to ensure that that victory won at the Supreme Court a week ago isn’t undone by anti-gun lawmakers, who were set to introduce and approve their new restrictions on the very same day without any public input or testimony. In fact, as of 10:30 this morning King says he’d been told that none of the Republicans in the New York State Senate had been able to see the legislation that they’d be voting on within just a few hours. Apparently that’s because there was no bill at that point. Check out this update from around 4 p.m. Eastern:

Three hours after the special legislative session in Albany officially began at noon, the gun bill and proposed Equality Amendment were still being hammered out behind closed doors.

Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat, emerged from discussions around 3 p.m. and told reporters the gun legislation was nearly completed, with some details still unresolved but agreement among leaders of the two chambers on the overall content.

“I think we’re very, very close,” he said.

Myrie said the proposal was so vital to public safety that lawmakers and the administration were focused on ensuring it would comply with the Supreme Court decision and withstand any legal challenges. Among the topics still under discussion was what types of public places would be classified as “sensitive areas” where carrying guns is forbidden.

“This is such an important public safety bill; we want to make sure that it isn’t subject to attack,” he said.

Oh, it’s going to be subject to “attack” by Second Amendment supporters, and if the law’s intent is that the average New Yorker is prevented from exercising their right to carry in public (with a few “extraordinary” exceptions for “sensitive places” for the purposes of self-defense, then it’s going to get tossed.

It’s funny… for decades now the state has had their “may issue” laws in place and never saw fit to require any sort of training or limit the places where the chosen few could carry a firearm. As of today, in fact, the 4,000 or so New York City residents who possess a handgun carry permit are free to take their firearms with them on subways and buses, but now that the Supreme Court has ruled that everyday New Yorkers, not just the powerful, wealthy, and well-connected (as well as a paltry few who could demonstrate a “justifiable need”) can carry a gun to protect themselves from violent criminals, Gov. Kathy Hochul and her fellow Democrats have suddenly found it necessary to impose a host of new restrictions that they’re apparently coming up with on the fly.

If these laws are so sensible, why didn’t Democrats try to put them in place before now? If they’re so sensible, why can’t the public weigh in on them before lawmakers approve them? In fact, how can you call something sensible when you haven’t even written it yet?

What Hochul and her anti-gun allies in the legislature are doing is nothing more than defying the Supreme Court and continuing to put the lives and safety of New Yorkers at risk by putting in place laws that are designed to inhibit their right to bear arms in self-defense. Meanwhile, what happens when one of their own allegedly violates the state’s gun control laws? They’re allowed to avoid prosecution and felony charges, naturally.

Tom King knows how frustrating this is for New York gun owners, but he encouraged them to “keep the faith” during our conversation today. As long as the Democrats in charge of the state continue to violate the Second Amendment rights of residents, King says the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association will haul them into court and hold them to account.

New NJ gun control bills head to Murphy for signing

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The Bruen decision was always going to upset a lot of apple carts. We all knew it, even before the decision came out. There was no way this particular Court was likely to side with New York on this issue. It just wasn’t happening.

And it didn’t.

Now, many states are scrambling to pass new gun control laws. One, New Jersey, is already at the point of sending a bill to Gov. Phil Murphy for signing.

New Jersey is on the verge of further tightening its already strict gun laws as the state Legislature passed a package of bills Wednesday to increase firearm regulations and Gov. Phil Murphy vowed immediately to sign them, ending a long stalemate on the issue.

Under the seven proposals — many of which Murphy has sought for more than a year — New Jersey would mandate people receive firearm training to obtain a gun permit, ban .50 caliber rifles, require micro-stamping technology, stipulate new residents moving from other states register firearms, regulate handgun ammunition, crack down on ghost guns, and make it easier to sue gun manufacturers and dealers over gun crimes in the state.

So, let’s take a look at these proposals one by one.

Training Mandate

Now, this one is interesting because Bruen didn’t actually close the door on training requirements. It probably should have, but it did argue that such a requirement couldn’t be overly onerous. The bill itself doesn’t actually dictate a length for training, saying only “a course of instruction approved by the superintendent in the lawful and safe handling and storage of firearms.”

In other words, they may well be a simple two-hour course that deals just with the basics.

Or the superintendent may only approve courses with 40 hours of classroom instruction and another 20 in range time, which would be going too far.

Whether or not this would survive really depends on what form the approved training consists of.

.50 Caliber Rifle Ban

This one is particularly stupid to me because we’ve never seen a crime committed with such a firearm. At least, not since the days of cap lock muzzleloaders being the primary firearms available.

So why is this ban a thing? Because anti-Second Amendment lawmakers are terrified of such guns. They’re great for defending against tyranny, which makes them too awful for these folks to contemplate.

However, based on my reading of Bruen, I’m not entirely sure this would survive.

While .50 caliber rifles aren’t as common as AR-15s, they may be in common enough use to get this law overturned.

Microstamping

They’re passing this. Expect nothing to come of it since microstamping doesn’t actually work as advertised and likely never will.

This may be the law, but I expect reality to set in within a few years, particularly since this law may well create a de facto gun ban, which I doubt the Supreme Court will take kindly to.

Especially following Bruen.

Requiring New Residents to Register Firearms

Figure the odds of this actually happening.

Look, if someone moves into New Jersey with the intention of staying forever, they probably will. If someone is only there for a couple of years–say, military or something–then I suspect many will just pretend the guns are stored out of state.

Plus, registries really are unconstitutional in the first place. No one should be forced to tell the government what weapons they have with which they can defend themselves from the government. That flies in the face of what the Founding Fathers intended.

Handgun Ammo Regulation

This requires ammunition dealers to keep a record of who buys ammo and then provide that record to the state police.

Congratulations, New Jersey. Black market types all over the state are looking forward to this new and exciting business opportunity as people go across state lines to buy up ammo, drive back, then sell the ammo to those who don’t want to show up on those records.

Nicely done.

“Crack down” on “Ghost Guns”

Homemade firearms are the scapegoat for every governmental failure imaginable right now. They represent a tiny fraction of firearms used in criminal offenses, yet are treated as if they’re the reason we have high crime.

This is nothing more than an attempt to look like they’re doing something without actually doing anything.

Gun Industry Liability

This is going to be another attempt to try and blame gun companies and dealers, and their marketing, for violent crimes. The problem is that they generally don’t require the bad guy to have even seen the marketing, which I don’t think would survive a legal challenge.

Then there’s the idea that Bruen may actually have gutted this kind of thing.

So, all in all, New Jersey is going to push more and more gun control in spite of Bruen, the Constitution, and reality.

What else is new?