NY SAFE Act Makes Second Amendment Less Safe

by Gerard Emershaw

Last week more than 1,000 people protested the SAFE Act outside New York’s capital in Albany. The New York gun control law was passed over a year ago, but an upcoming deadline by which New Yorkers must register their assault weapons has created renewed fury on the part of the Empire State’s gun owners.

The SAFE Act—The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013—contains a number of important provisions:

• It bans “high capacity magazines” of over ten rounds
• It requires that ammunition dealers perform background checks
• It creates a mandatory registry of New Yorkers who own assault weapons
• It requires that mental health professionals who believe a mental health patient made a credible threat of harming others report the threat to a mental health director, who would then have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Service
• It makes it a crime not to report a stolen gun within 24 hours
• It requires a background check for all gun sales except to immediate family
• It mandates that guns be “safely stored” from any household member who has been convicted of a felony or domestic violence crime, has been involuntarily committed, or is currently under an order of protection
• It bans all internet gun sales in the state
• It requires New York gun owners to renew their permits every five years
• It allows law enforcement officials to preemptively seize one's firearms without a warrant or court order when there is probable cause the individual is mentally unstable or intends to use the weapons to commit a crime

I have previously made an absolutist defense of the Second Amendment, and these considerations still hold true. The fact that the Supreme Court has ever allowed the federal, state, or local governments to infringe the Second Amendment rights of Americans either means that they cannot read or that they have the hubris to think that they know better about what the Founding Fathers meant than the Founding Fathers did. It does not get much clearer than “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Banning “high capacity magazines” is clearly just an attempt to create an eventual slippery that will eventually lead to more bans on guns. What is so magic about ten rounds? Would it be so difficult for a mass shooter like Adam Lanza to carry three 10 round clips instead of one 30 clip? Is changing gun cartridges that difficult? Does the New York state legislature and Governor believe that the lives of the first ten would be victims do not matter? It seems that it should be all or nothing in this matter, and for the SAFE Act advocates, it is all or nothing. They want to ban all guns, but they are doing it in a gradualist fashion. Originally the SAFE Act made the limit 7 rounds, but that was struck down in court. Eventually, if gun control advocates get their way, the limit will be a zero round magazine.

Laws like the SAFE Act create solutions in search of a problem. Mass shootings in the United States are not on the rise. The total has held steady for the last 20 years. The 24/7 cable news culture and internet makes coverage of tragic crimes like Sandy Hook omnipresent, and this creates the illusion that such crimes are increasing. Enhanced background checks will likely not prevent such crimes. An examination of 93 mass shootings from 2009 through September 2013, conducted by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, found no indication that any of the perpetrators were prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms.

The New York requirement that assault rifles be registered is clearly nothing but a way for the government to invade the privacy of its citizens and be able to single out gun owners in the state for potential future persecution. There is no reason why the government needs to know who owns an assault rifle. In 2010, there were only 358 murders carried out in the United States using a rifle of any kind. Twice as many were carried out by hands, fists, or feet. Assault weapons are simply not used in very many crimes. Therefore, it must be that the gun grabbers in New York are after something else.

One possibility is that they know that many will not register their assault weapons with the state, and thus, the New York government can magically turn law abiding New York gun owners into criminals through the use of this unconstitutional law. A similar law in Connecticut was ignored by scores of gun owners in that state, and there is little reason to believe that the same will not be true in New York. This will give the New York government ample reason to begin a witch hunt of gun registry evaders. It will allow it to use the SAFE Act’s unconstitutional gun grabbing provision to grab unregistered assault weapons without a warrant.

Background checks and government gun registries of any kind egregiously violate the Second Amendment. Self-defense—particularly against a tyrannical government—is a natural right of human beings. Laws such as the SAFE Act make Americans less safe by eroding the protection of that natural right. Such gun control measures are part of a death by one thousand cuts strategy by which guns will gradually be outlawed. Such a strategy must be opposed from the very beginning.