A gunman armed with an assault-style weapon killed 10 people and wounded three others at a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black section of Buffalo on May 14.
The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, is white, and the 10 people who died were all Black. Before the attack, Gendron had posted a nearly 200-page racist screed online.
The attack in Buffalo is now one of more than 600 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2022 – 50 alone in November.
To their credit, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature responded to the shooting in Buffalo by approving legislation that prohibits the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21, bans body armor sales except for people in select professions, closes gun law loopholes and strengthens the state’s Red Flag Law to keep guns away from dangerous people.
“Gun violence is an epidemic that is tearing our country apart. Thoughts and prayers won’t fix this, but taking strong action will,” Hochul said.
The legislation strengthened the state’s already relatively strict gun laws, which are the No. 1 reason New York has one of the lowest rates of death by guns in the United States.
But it was not enough.
Just because New York has a low homicide rate does not mean you should actually feel safe.
This country has vastly more mass shootings and gun deaths than any other nation. Not one is even close. So, New York’s low rate of deaths by guns nationally is only relative to the many states with laxer gun laws and higher death rates.
Why then only prohibit the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21? Why not ban the sale of automatic weapons to everyone? What is magical about under 21?
Many mass murderers are older than that.
Lee Aldrich, the suspect in the shooting at a LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs, Colo., where five people were killed and 18 wounded in less than 90 seconds in November, was 22.
Some legislators have argued against a total ban all semiautomatic weapons based on the recent record of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices ruled in June to overturn New York State’s century-old law strictly limiting carrying guns outside the home.
But so what? New York officials ought to pass laws that they believe do the most to protect the New Yorkers’ safety and take their chances with the Supreme Court
Even Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority decision in the concealed carry case, said states were free to ban guns in some sensitive places, such as schools, government buildings, legislative assemblies, polling places and courthouses.
Hochul and the Legislature responded by approving legislation that requires people carrying firearms outside the home to have firearm training, in-person interviews and reviews of applicants’ social media when they apply for a permit.
The law, which has been challenged in federal court, also prohibits those with concealed carry permits from carrying weapons in sensitive places such as Times Square, schools, government offices and hospitals.
Like many other mass shooters, Aldrich’s weapon of choice in Colorado was an AR-15 style rifle – a weapon of war designed to kill people on the battlefield with bullets flying at high velocity and then exploding upon impact.
President Biden renewed calls for a national ban on AR-15 style rifles following the recent mass shootings but the odds are against it being approved by Congress despite the continued mayhem.
New York is one of a few states to take action on its own against assault weapons but has undermined its own laws by a failure to enforce them all.
The 2013 New York Safe Act banned the sale of assault weapons and required anyone who owned such guns to register them with state police.
The provisions were among the most controversial of a number of measures to reduce gun violence in the wake of a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT., in 2012.
The Safe Act defined assault weapons as semi-automatics capable of accepting detachable magazines and with a military-style feature that could include protruding pistol grips, folding stocks, thumbhole stocks, a second-hand grip, bayonet mount or flash suppressor.
At the time, many gun owners scoffed at the law, and some county sheriffs said they would not enforce it.
Now, more than 40% of owners of assault weapons who did register their firearms with New York State Police under the law failed to recertify the guns five years later as the law requires.
So nearly a decade after starting a registry to track assault weapons, state officials do not know how many of those guns are circulating in the state.
How about at least treating battlefield weapons the way we treat cars by requiring they all be registered and require owners to have insurance?
Assault and semiautomatic weapons only represent a small but terrifying part of the problem in New York and the rest of the United States.
So New York needs to do better than that on semiautomatic and non-semiautomatic weapons.
This is a great challenge in a country with an estimated 390 million guns in circulation in the United States – more than one per person. Or put another way, with 4.4% of the world’s population, Americans own 42% of the world’s guns.
This will require state officials to do a much better job in talking the talk about guns as well as walking the walk.
Study after study has shown that the reason for the country’s high rate of mass shootings and gun violence is guns.
Not because American society is unusually violent. Not because of its racial divisions and polarization. Not because of a lack of mental health care.
But in an epic display of political malpractice, Hochul and Democrats around the state allowed Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin to present himself during the recent gubernatorial election as the candidate for law and order. Even as he repeatedly called for less gun regulation.
Zeldin said in the wake of the Buffalo shooting that New York should dump its red flag law, loosen permits for concealed weapons and allow New Yorkers to “stand your ground.”
He later lauded the Supreme Court’s decision on carrying guns outside the home, saying it reaffirmed a Constitutional right that “shall not be infringed.”
But Zeldin, who blamed a spike in crime in New York on bail reform, still became the tough-on-crime candidate. That sends a very bad message.
Voters need to hear the truth from their officials – that being tough on crime means restricting access to guns.