“The scourge of gun violence in our nation is one of the most pressing issues of our time and we are not going to wait for the federal government to act,” thundered Gov. Andrew Cuomo in January as he pushed for new gun-control bills. But “not going to wait” turns out to be . . . not quite right.
Oh, the Legislature duly passed the six bills — but, more than half a year later, it hasn’t sent most of them to the gov so he can sign them into law.
Happily, it did send him the Red Flag law, which lets family members, law-enforcement officials and others ask a judge to temporarily keep someone from getting and keeping firearms where there’s clear and convincing evidence he’s a high risk to try to harm himself or others.
But other bills, covering issues from bump stocks to waiting periods, are on hold. The Trump administration issued a federal ban on bump stocks in the interim, but the other measures aren’t moot.
Yes, the Legislature and gov routinely slow the pace of bills sent over for his signature for perfectly practical reasons. But they’re still plainly falling down on Cuomo’s vow “to do everything in our power to keep guns out of the hands of people too dangerous to have them.”