We wrote the other day about the refusal of a District Attorney in upstate NY to prosecute a man for having 9 bullets in his legal 10-round magazine, which exceeded the new state limit of 7 bullets under the so-called SAFE Act.
While the District Attorney declined to make a sweeping stand against the SAFE Act, the vast majority of county legislatures have passed resolutions against the SAFE Act and police unions also have protested the law
Numerous Sheriffs and county clerks also are refusing to enforce the law as reported by Gannett, SAFE Act compliance elusive, upstate sheriffs critical of law:
Some upstate officials are balking at provisions of New York’s gun-control law, saying the regulations are unclear and burdensome.
Erie County Sheriff Timothy Howard, for example, said this month that he won’t enforce the controversial SAFE Act because he disagrees with it. He is one of five sheriffs to sign onto a lawsuit seeking to have the law overturned.
“If you know this is wrong, you can’t enforce it,” Howard told WGRZ in Buffalo, a Gannett television station….
Putnam County Sheriff Donald Smith was one of the sheriffs to sign onto to the legal brief in support of the lawsuit. He said he will enforce the law, but he also has the right to speak out against it. He said the law, which expands an assault-weapons ban and limits the number of bullets in a magazine to seven, will make citizens less safe.
“When we perceive a law is not well designed and will not promote the public good, then I strongly believe we have a duty to do what we can within the legal processes to oppose and change the law and to help craft a better one,” Smith said….
Assemblyman Bill Nojay, R-Pittsford, Monroe County, said he expects there will be widespread non-compliance with the SAFE Act. By next April, gun owners will have to register their weapons with the state to be included in a new State Police database. That database won’t be made public.
Nojay will be a featured speaker at a gun rally at the Capitol on June 11, along with Jeanine Pirro, a television host and former Westchester County district attorney.
“I don’t know of a single county clerk or sheriff or mental health office north of Westchester County that is going to comply with the SAFE Act,” Nojay said.
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Comments
I’m glad to see that some cops reject becoming gestapo. Maybe president selective enforcement will chime in on “stupid” upstate NY cops.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/05/shhh-no-one-tell-cuomo-and-bloomberg.html
Cop now carries LOTS of ammo, after a life-changing gun battle.
But noOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooobody needs more than 10 rounds…
These folks are not, of course, alone. In Colorado we see that 55 out of 62 county Sheriffs have joined in a lawsuit against the recently ramrodded Colorado anti-gun law(s). We need to support ALL of them NOW and prepare to do the same in our own states when that becomes necessary.
I’m ambivalent about this trend. To the extent that an obnoxious law was passed by a legitimate process, it should be enforced. The remedy is to replace the politicians who passed the law and then repeal it,or, alternatively, to do battle in court.
I do not believe that conservatives should adopt the tactics of the left, which include thumbing their noses at laws to which they object.
Agree. You can’t bitch about Justice not enforcing immigration or voting laws and cheer when local sheriffs decide not to enforce a law you don’t agree with.
This is an argument I have had with people for years.
If you say, for instance, you are a law-abiding person…PERIOD…
you are waiting for the law that will make you a slave.
We sometimes have a very high moral obligation to DISOBEY the law.
IMNHO.
That is an act of civil disobedience, which is different than the police or authorities choosing not enforcing a law.
It is also an act of obedience to the Constitution to refuse to obey a law that violates the Constitution.
Or for a person in the military to disobey an unlawful order.
Our country started with “lawbreakers” fighting tyranny. The action of sheriffs against laws they see as contrary to the constitution they swore to uphold. That seems a better first step than “waiting for slavery”, as Rags puts it.
I can’t agree. There can be unjust laws, something that goes beyond mere disagreement in policy. For example, if preaching Christian morality becomes a hate crime, what should police do? This is reality in Canada.
The fundamentals of society have shifted so far that there is no longer any generally accepted basis for right and wrong, just and unjust. That doesn’t excuse police in enforcing unjust laws. The left would reduce our good cops to gestapo if they could, jailing folks for doing nothing more than living as they always have, but now run afoul of the left’s hatred of them.
Well said, Jerry. Yours is a perspective that we don’t often hear in the US. I recommend others take heed of your admonition.
One can make an argument on the basis of divine, natural, and constitutional law that preaching Christian morality is to be permitted. It is more difficult for one to make an argument on a similarly solid basis, and as directly from basic principles, that having more than seven rounds in a magazine is to be permitted. I’m not saying that an argument can be made, only that it’s less clear and less direct in this case as to whether the conclusion necessarily follows from the first axioms of morality or from the relevant state and national constitutions. For such cases, we have established legal processes whereby the people can make a reasonable determination through popular authority, e.g., through the legislature by laws, through the executive by a veto or pardon, and through the courts by jury nullification. Extraconstitutional refusal to enforce a law at all is not among these processes — and it just so happens to be exactly the method that the Obama administration employs time and time again. So the concern that nomadic100 and Anchovy express is eminently reasonable.
It was passed using an abused process. Cuomo signed a Message of Necessity to avoid the three-day aging period for new legislation. It’s not as though past New York governors haven’t also abused Messages of Necessity; but in this case the “secret government” odor of it proved so strong that even good government groups complained – as have the Sheriffs and a police union or two – about use of that tactic.
I have to agree; we complain about Holder and others choosing what laws, then we want to praise our side. This would leave us as guilty of the same.
Having said that, I do see a difference; (significant one as well); those sheriffs are joining in a law suit; not just dismissing the law, but working with the system to have unjust laws nullified.
Ands that is what i commend them for – working to have the law overturned. And i do believe once they are part of an action before the court, then they should do just what they are doing.
That’s a big difference between those working to keep America sane and free and the Progs working to undermine our fundamental values. One side still believes the law serves the people, the other side sees the law as a tool for reshaping America.
The question for the rest of us … Do we let them stand alone in this fight, or do we stand with them, using our rights to drive the Progs away from their positions of power?
There is right and wrong. The New York SAFE act was designed to be unconstitutional.
There in lies the issue. The Constitution is the constitution.
I drive though a town that is a corrupt black democrat hell hole (but I repeat myself). I disobey every law I can while there – run red lights, speed (double the limit and add 10 mph is a good metric), carry an unregistered pistol, have a machete, tire iron and various other weapons at hand and am always ready to run over the stray obamaite wandering in a drug-induced stupor down the middle of the road. If the government is corrupt why should I obey any law it passes? Fuck them and the racism they rode in on.
“By next April, gun owners will have to register their weapons with the state to be included in a new State Police database. That database won’t be made public.”
Until some “low level” partisan democrat decides to release your private personal information, of course, and they will not be prosecuted for this security breach. They promise.