NRA: We didn't get a chance to oppose N.Y. law
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo walks to the podium to deliver his third State of the State address at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, N.Y. on January 9, 2013. / AP Photo/Mike Groll
ALBANY, N.Y. The National Rifle Association said the secretive negotiations and lightning-fast passage of New York's tough new gun control laws squelched the powerful gun lobby's ability to mount opposition.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he had to engineer quick enactment to prevent a counterproductive buying spree of now-outlawed guns.
The legislation was negotiated over the weekend, introduced on the first day of the 2013 legislative session and signed into law the next day.
N.Y. governor signs tougher gun laws
The NRA, which has thwarted such restrictions nationwide, had members working the phones but didn't have enough time to coordinate a public rally. The gun-rights group and some New York lawmakers say the rushed legislation also undermined public input and meaningful debate.
"They did slide this through in the middle of the night," said Tom King, president of the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, the state's NRA affiliate. "There was no negotiation with any pro-gun group. Up until 10 o'clock in the evening of the day of the vote, they were telling me there was no agreement."
The group annually sponsors "Sportsmen's Day" where hundreds of hunters and other gun owners crowd statehouse hallways to urge their legislators to support gun rights. There was no chance to mount a similar event this week, since it would require a designated Capitol space, permits, legislative sponsorship and arranging for buses and city parking fees, King said.
"It takes longer than two days to do that," he said.
King said his group asked members to call legislators ahead of the legislative session when they knew it would be coming up as an issue.
"We urged our members to call rather than email. It's awful easy to delete emails, but you have to answer the phone," King said. "That's something we do any time there's any kind of threat to Second Amendment rights."
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Cuomo and legislative leaders negotiated the bill's language behind closed doors, a regular occurrence in Albany. The bill was introduced on Monday evening, passed the Senate on Monday night and approved by the Assembly on Tuesday. Cuomo, who issued a special waiver to avoid the usual three-day window for lawmakers and the public to review bills, signed it into law late Tuesday afternoon.
Cuomo said in a radio interview Thursday that the one-day buying spree at gun stores would have turned into three if he hadn't asked lawmakers to shortcut the usual waiting period for acting on new legislation.
He said polling shows most New Yorkers favor tighter gun restrictions. A Siena College poll released Thursday showed 73 percent of the state's voters want the toughest assault weapon and magazine restrictions in the U.S.
The new law reduces the maximum legal magazine size from 10 bullets to seven. It redefines assault weapons to include semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines that have one military-style feature such as a pistol grip, flash suppressor or bayonet mount, instead of two. Owners of an estimated 1 million formerly legal guns can keep them but are required to register them with state police within a year.
The legislation was not a complete surprise to New York's estimated 4.75 million gun owners. Cuomo had promised tighter gun laws following the December slayings of 20 children and six educators at a Connecticut elementary school. Authorities said the gunman used a military-style semiautomatic rifle and 30-round magazines.
Cuomo said Thursday that gun control is a 30-year-old debate, and many bills were introduced previously. Legislators haven't wanted to offend some people on an issue they feel passionate about, and the Newtown, Conn., shootings were a catalyst.
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Since the bill passed and the nra did not succeed, the nra now has to resort to threatening the NY legislative representatives that voted for the bill. I guess it is ok to threaten people when they don't vote your way.
The nra is nothing but idiots with weapons and that is a terrible and fatal combination.
The people that speak out for the nra are such small and unimportant people trying to make themselves appear to be important. They are so sad; I guess I could think about feeling sorry for them. Not, they are not worth the time or effort.
And as a member of the NRA. The NRA teaches safety and sets safety standards as well as safe shoot events. The NRA-ILA fights for the second amendment.
Please get that right. Better to stay silent, than speak and sound a fool.
The shootings are tragic..but not one single law would have prevented them..Tell me.
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That's right, that's why NYS and the president have come up with a multitude of approaches that will influence thousands of other existing gun laws. It's not about the passage of one law, it is about changing the culture and the behavior to make this country safer, and deals particularly with protecting children in schools and others in certain public spaces, and it deals with the mentally unstable and a host of other issues, ones largely centering on putting an end to loopholes, unregistered guns and undocumented private sales.
There are a total of 35,000 separate gun laws and regulations existing in all fifty states and Puerto Rico for individuals, groups, businesses and agencies, be them public or private, for profit or not. These new active approaches will help provide better initiative and funding to weed out the laws we don't need anymore, and reel in a new and better thinking on responsible gun ownership and activity- at all levels, all people, be they as a matter of public or private circumstances, conditions.
Give us all a break, and give it up.
I'm a former member of the NRA myself, and I for one know of no other group, organization, coalition, foundation, PAC (small, medium or large) or lobbyist-related formation, that marches under the banner of a single, original, constitutional right. Be it a right the high courts have generally held to be a matter of the states, of the individual, of the nation as a whole, or one or another cross-section of society's public business. Is the NRA, itself, just another powerful unified group, or a strong lobby, or is it really simply just our country's most overzealous and out-of-control culture of divisive mentalities?
At what point doesn't the NRA equate with a pathological mind disorder its members and supporters all suffer from?
There's no collective of individuals I can think of, that does what it is the NRA does, and with such impunity and massive bootstrapping. This business of championing every single piece of proposed legislation, funding, cuts, tax exemptions, or private transaction - be they for a business, consumer, property owner, or private person, all beneath a SOLE piece of our Constitution, is virtually unparalleled. Can anyone think of anything to the contrary?
No group in society- ZERO- should have such an entitlement or big stick. Gun ownership rights are, of all things, a right for a person to have and use a piece of property- a single damn piece. It doesn't matter if it is one, or two, or five, or a dozen, or a hundred, the focus and concentration, from the amendment's own perspective, concerns but one single, individual type of physical property: Firearms.
It is absurd, that the overall case being centered around a solitary circumstance of inviolable entitlement to such property, guns, that there be but just ONE voice standing for its underlying causes. Where's the opposition to that? Where the hell is the coalition to stand up and voice itself AGAINST this clockwork and unbridled machinery of touting a single right granted to our individual citizens?
Enough IS enough. It is time the people speak out, and make their voices heard, on behalf of ALL others who don't possess guns, don't care to, don't want one, and say that we've all had- "The People", that is - enough of this over 130 year tradition of touting this one single item of constitutionality. We're talking about property non-essential for the individual in society to possess the fundamental needs and tools to survive, from a pure "freedom" and "survival" standpoint.
Our government has indeed had its own distinguished right to bear "arms" and for it to be well-regulated, and I have yet to see one person beg the question as to why there's been only a single, lone national group, speaking on the matter of that same principled right, but from an individual's own perspective of "keeping and bearing" such.
Where's the shame? Where's the outcry over that?
Get out of town. I was always a responsible gun owner, and even if I still was a gun owner now, I would feel no different on the overall matter.
I left the NRA because I never received the official NRA membership merchandise I paid for and was assured I would be getting.
Small wonder why, when I look back and think about it. It is a corrupt organization, one that attmepts to nickel and dime its members, is all about "gimme, gimme, gimme, take, take take." And the mentality behind their mission is spinning out of control. It leaves a lot to be desired, in my view.
If I still had guns, I doubt I'd be an NRA member anymore, myself. I have more class than to be on its call lists, a target for being contacted and asked to listen to all of their parroted crap.
A responsible citizen who bears arms legally and with proper precaution DOES NOT need to be NRA-affiliated whatsoever, let alone being an active member. Most especially, nowadays.
I am a gun owner but I do not in any way support the nra.
Thank God Obama is standing up to this insanity!
fck
nra