On December 14, 2012, a highly disturbed individual murdered twenty children and six adult staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. On January 15, 2013, the New York State legislature, in the dead of night, decided to respond to this tragedy by making the millions of gun owners in this state criminals by fiat. Millions of New York residents who had committed no crimes were made to pay for the actions of that disturbed individual by those that were put into office to protect the very rights that the Constitution of The United States & The Bill of Rights highlighted. The NY SAFE ACT, the result, is in many ways, the culmination of the means of government so perfectly summed up in the words of then Presidential Chief of Staff & current mayor of The City of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel:
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
This is government by crisis in its most naked form: a terrible tragedy, a response must be swift, take away the rights of those who had nothing to do with the incident in question…for their safety. Can you say 9/11 and The USA PATRIOT ACT. Another bill, passed in crisis, that did nothing (as we have come to learn) to protect us, but oh so many things to make us less free then we were before the incident that brought it to fruition.
You do not penalize the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, but that seems to be prerogative of government.
We here, the millions of gun owners of New York State, took no part in Sandy Hook, but we have been made to pay for it, and it is a situation which we can no longer remain silent and inactive on. The number of gun owners in this state far outweigh not only those that voted for Andrew Cuomo in the last gubernatorial election, but far outstrip the number of people who voted at all. If we can come together and use the very system that has come after us, to go after those that wish to crush us under its weight, we can throw Cuomo out as well as all of those who voted with him.
That the SAFE ACT was passed may not matter to many, but how the SAFE ACT was passed should matter to all. Secret meetings in the dead of night? Deals being passed to take away our rights? Uproar has been the result of incidents like this and an uproar should be felt by all New Yorkers whether pro-gun or anti-gun for if the government can get away with passing this law in this manner, what’s to stop them doing it with other laws.
The rage over The SAFE ACT isn’t about guns, it’s about rights! What if it was the 1st Amendment being trampled on or the 4th in such an egregious way. Many of you reading this may not like guns but you cannot be for penalizing honest Americans for a crime they did not commit! We live in an age of violence–yes, but has going after the law-abiding ever made things better? I think noe, and if you think hard enough, you’ll realize that this is true.
The SAFE ACT must be repealed and thrown into the trash bin of history with a myriad of other ill-conceived ‘measures’ to ‘keep us safe’ from that which is supposedly lurking in the dark.