New York Laws Control Guns But Not Criminals
Considering New York’s highly restrictive gun control laws, it should have been virtually impossible for alleged shooter Luigi Mangione or anyone else to commit a crime using a handgun. Yet history clearly demonstrates that gun control legislation is minimally effective at reducing gun-related crime. New York’s 114-year embrace of gun control laws is proof of that.
The state’s first assault on gun owners dates back to 1911 when New York politician and thug “Big Tim” Sullivan decided to ramrod the law that bears his name through the state legislature. In what is perhaps the ultimate irony of gun control legislation, the true intent of the Sullivan Act was to protect criminals, not law-abiding citizens.
To fully appreciate Sullivan’s audacity, you have to take a mental journey to New York City during the waning years of the 19th century. Irish immigrants and first-generation Irish Americans largely controlled the city’s corrupt Democratic party, which headquartered itself at Tammany Hall, a building on East 14th Street. By the late 1800s, “Tammany Hall” had become more than a mere building; it stood as the symbol of New York City's political corruption.
Like many of his Tammany Hall colleagues, Sullivan had turned to politics as a means of expanding the scope of his illegal activities. (Apparently, some things never change.) Concurrent with Sullivan’s rise to power in the early 1900s, “the neighborhood went to hell”, as a wave of Italian immigrants, many of whom brought Mafia connections with them, flooded the city. Ethnic diversity being unheard of at the time, the reigning Irish/American criminals never welcomed their newly arrived Italian counterparts into the fold. Instead, they saw the budding Mafia types as competition, and law-abiding immigrants as an additional source of potential victims.
The advent of Italian “bad guys” seriously altered New York City’s criminal landscape. Instead of being able to run their illegal operations without challenge, Sullivan and his cronies had to confront the fact that an arduous day of racketeering and strong-arming would likely be interrupted by challenges and preemptive strikes from armed competitors. Certainly, life would be much easier for Tammany Hall’s elite if they were the only ones carrying guns.
Using his Tammany Hall connections, Sullivan managed to win election to the New York State Senate. As a state legislator, he was able to push the passage of a law that empowered local authorities to issue or deny gun ownership permits at their own discretion. Although the Sullivan Act is largely cited as a gun control law, it in fact applies to a variety of weapons, including brass knuckles, blackjacks, bludgeons, and bombs. The “genius” of the Sullivan Act is that as a state, as opposed to city law, its true purpose was more easily disguised.
After the 1911 passage of the Sullivan Act, local police departments have had the authority to issue or deny gun permits. Outside of New York City, it’s considerably easier to obtain a gun permit. However, the Big Apple’s police department has maintained virtually the same policies as those in effect when the department was under Tammany Hall’s thumb. Ever since the Sullivan Act became law, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has issued permits almost exclusively to retired police officers and well-connected residents. (Some notable New Yorkers who have been granted permits are Senator Charles Schumer, Robert DeNiro, Howard Stern, Harvey Keitel, Joan Rivers, and William Buckley, Jr.)
Apparently, in the land of bleeding-heart liberals, if you’re rich and/or famous you should be able to protect and defend yourself, but if you’re not, you don’t deserve that right.
For generations of New Yorkers, gun ownership has been a privilege, not a right. Perhaps as testimony to the ineffectiveness of the Sullivan Act, the state legislature more recently passed the SAFE Act, (Secure Ammunition and Firearm Enforcement) a knee-jerk reaction to the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting tragedy.
“The New York State SAFE Act stops criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from buying a gun by requiring universal background checks on gun purchases. It increases penalties for people who use illegal guns, mandates life in prison” without parole for anyone who murders a first responder, and imposes the toughest assault weapons ban in the country.”
It will be equally ineffective at reducing gun crime. It is only in liberal La-La Land that anyone believes criminals and the mentally ill will attempt to purchase a gun legally. As for penalties, does anyone think someone who commits murder is concerned about the penalty? In fact, it’s just another tool to restrict gun ownership. Although it may seem as though the SAFE Act is an unprecedented assault on 2nd Amendment rights, it's simply business as usual for New York legislators.
Tim Sullivan and Tammany Hall may be long gone, but their spirits live on in any number of politicians who would have us believe that the best way to protect our Constitutional rights is to surrender them to government regulation.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
 | A guest post by
|
That was very interesting and not surprising in the least. I assume my Irish kin suffered greatly in Ireland until they popped over here. Former slave turned brilliant statesman Frederick Douglas references the dire circumstances, as did did W.E.B. Dubois decades later. Unfortunately, their past didn't prevent them from corruption in the US. Perhaps, the system was easy pickings. This is why I didn't trust Obama. He came from the corrupt machinery of Chicago.
Little known, and even less frequently discussed, is the notion that the NY SAFE Act and other similar laws (known broadly as Exteme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPOs) actually serve as a deterrent to mental health counseling, as well as other forms of medical care.
These so-called "Red Flag Laws" stand as barriers to access because their very language in some states (Colorado and New York, e.g.) specifically list clinicians as parties who can petition for the ERPO. Guns owners, in turn, are then avoidant of the very care they might seek to address their anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc.
Why is this important?
Because suicides comprise ~60% of all gun deaths annually, depending on the year. This includes military veterans. Put differently, an average of 74 people per day die by firearm suicide alone. Mass shootings comprise ~1% of all gun deaths and the largest mass shooting in US history took 59 lives, on October 1, 2017. In other words, we have more than a Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting *daily* in this country that no one talks about, but nearly everyone thinks is preventable.
If we want to get serious about solving "gun violence" and curbing unnecessary gun deaths, then we need to attract firearm owners into care, not repel them from it.
For more on innovative efforts that don't step on constitutional rights, check out Walk The Talk America at wtta.org.