New York Officials Defend State’s Gun Control Following DOJ Letter

On Friday, I wrote about a letter written by lawmakers from New York who wanted the Department of Justice to investigate the state’s gun control laws. 

To be sure, the state has some ridiculous measures on the books. Some are being fought in court already, while others aren’t. At least, not yet. With the Department of Justice at least saying the right things on gun rights for a change, New York is a particularly good target for the new Second Amendment Task Force to look at.

However, New York seems to think otherwise.

In response to the letter—which you can read at the bottom of this story—New York’s top law enforcement officer defended those policies. “Gun safety laws keep New Yorkers and law enforcement officers safe from the scourge of gun violence,” reads a statement from the Office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent Friday. “We have successfully defended New York’s nation-leading gun safety laws in the past, and we are prepared to do so again.”

Gun control supporters highlight the state’s lower-than-average rate of gun deaths per capita. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2022, ranked New York in the No. 5 spot—behind Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and New Jersey—at 5.3 gun deaths per 100,000 residents.

“Our efforts have gotten more than 10,000 illegal guns off the streets, prevented teenagers from buying weapons of war, cracked down on ghost guns, and protected sensitive spaces like schools and subways,” Hochul said in a statement on Friday.

But critics say New York punishes responsible gun owners and violates the right to self-defense. Both Republicans, Stefanik and Tenney represent New York’s 21st and 24th House Districts, respectively. They accused Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators of treating gun rights as optional.

According to Tenney, “The Second Amendment is not a suggestion; it is a Constitutional guarantee.” Their letter asks the DOJ to enforce the constitutional rights of New Yorkers, since the state will not.

It should be noted that their so-called defense doesn’t actually touch on the constitutionality of any of the laws in question, which is the big problem with them.

It also doesn’t acknowledge that the “10,000 illegal guns” are definitive proof that gun control doesn’t work, that the “teenagers” who can’t buy the so-called weapons of war are also legal adults who can enlist in the military, that ghost guns are still being made throughout the state, and that there’s an even bigger problem with crime on subways since the laws passed.

In other words, they’re using the effectiveness of the laws to defend them, only they’re not really effective in the first place.

Plus, as Tenney said, the Second Amendment isn’t some suggestion that states can shrug off when inconvenient. You can’t just decide that rights don’t matter because you think they should be secondary to your own desires.

Nothing they used to defend these laws has any bearing on their constitutionality.

There’s no discussion of analogs from the time of the nation’s founding or from when the 14th Amendment incorporated constitutional rights and applied them to the state. That’s what Bruen–a New York smackdown–laid out as required. Rahimi said it didn’t even need to be a one-to-one analog, and they still can’t seem to produce one in response.

This supposed defense is pathetic and we all know it.