Supers back 2nd Amendment

9/22/2022

By Patsy Nicosia

Schoharie County supervisors expect to follow the lead of legislators in Seneca, Sullivan and Niagara Counties in opposing what one called the state’s “gutting of Second Amendment rights,” and another, a “knee-jerk, unvetted and political reaction,” by passing a gun rights resolution of their own in October.
In a 3-2 decision on June 23, the Supreme Court ruled that New York State’s law regulating who can carry a gun in public--in place since 1913--was unconstitutional.
Under the law, residents needed to have a concealed-carry permit to carry a gun in public; to get the permit, they needed to a show a “good cause,” or special need.
The state responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling by making it a felony to bring a handgun into any state park, church, library, school, hospital, or government building.
It’s those changes that are now under fire.
Friday, Board of Supervisors’ chair Bill Federice called the restrictions “unnecessary and severely restrictive” to people already licensed to carry a firearm, and said they’d be working on their own resolution.
Seneca, Sullivan and Niagara Counties have all forwarded copies of their gun rights resolutions.
Seneca County calls the state’s gun law an “unconstitutional attack on the rights of law abiding citizens,” and a knee-jerk reaction “surreptitiously rushed through the legislature…”
The law is “an unconstitutional infringement upon the Second Amendment right for law-abiding citizens to bear arms, an overt infringement upon freedom and liberty…devoid of common sense [that] does nothing to deal with the problems of crime and illegal firearms.”
The Seneca County Board of Supervisors opposes the concealed –carry law and urges its repeal.
In not quite as charged language, Niagara County’s Legislature did the same, accusing the state of “seizing on that terrible tragedy,” when in May, 10 Black shoppers were murdered and three injured at a Buffalo Tops, “to rush through 10 new laws that are meant to erode the rights of legal gun-owners and punish the legal and legitimate businesses in the firearms industry.”
Niagara County legislators called the gun law a “flagrant violation of…constitutional rights,” and said they are committed to overturning it.
The Sullivan County Legislature opposes the conceal carry law as “duly burdensome” and also called on the State Legislature to repeal it and declared “That the County of Sullivan is…a gun-friendly county which shall mean that those properly licensed to possess and carry a handgun shall be able to conceal and carry a handgun through the county unless specifically prohibited…”