“Nobody took the time or made the effort to find out what all this would entail. This was a case of ‘Let’s get this done, and we will figure it out later.’ But the details are now coming back to bite them in the butt.” – New York State Rifle and Pistol Association director Tom King in County officials: Pistol permit re-certification a ‘mess’ [via publican.com]
…and this is a surprise why?
One thing I’d love to see would be a sunset provision requirement for every law and regulation, that must be a reasonable time horizon (e.g. 10 years max, not 100).
Among other things, such a provision would allow laws that nobody likes but no politician has the courage to try to expunge, to quietly expire. It would keep the law books cleaner; and most importantly it would eventually take all of the legislative and regulative bodies’ time just to refresh the laws and rules that were needed, putting a cap on the total number and complexity.
It’ll never happen, but I can dream.
I’ll “vote” for that one. Even better, perhaps, or along side that, should be a requirement to repeal at least one (better more) of these older “laws” for each new one proposed. The repeal would have to be complete before the “new” one could be entered for a vote.
As you say, not ever going to happen. But it would be better than the eventual repeal of all their stupid “laws” by the collapse of the economy and society in general. Unfortunately, they are not wise enough to even think of that.
I like that idea. I would only add that a vite to preserve the law beyond the ten year (or whatever period) span should require a super majority of at least 60%. If something is oh so widely popular, as opposed to just intensely popular with a narrow special interest, then it should be able to muster more than 3/5 of the vote.
At New America’s constitutional convention, we might insist on a third chamber of Congress whose sole job it is to repeal legislation. That might counter the perpetual legislative motion machine that constantly churns out new laws so politicians look like they’re working.
Ala Heinlein?
Exactly. Story of his I read in college, just something lying on my roommate’s shelf I picked up one rainy day. Can’t remember the title, though. Moon something? Seem to recall it being set in space.
“Can’t remember the title, though. Moon something?”
The Moon is a harsh mistress?
I was thinking along the same lines as Jonathan – Houston: allow laws to last more than 10 years (or even potentially indefinitely) if they get a supermajority.
In my opinion the supermajority has to be even larger, at least 75% or maybe even 80%. For example everyone will agree that kidnapping, robbery, and murder should be illegal forever — and it should be a simple matter for 80% of politicians to vote that way.
What we really need is to do away with this business of lawmaking altogether. There ought to be one law: don’t violate the rights of others. Then instead of approaching legislation like, “We need this law so that we can accomplish x,” we’ll be asking the question, “What are our fundamental rights?” I think this approach would be a natural check against unjust laws.
Or maybe “lawmakers” would just come up with a whole new host of ridiculous rights (like the “right” to other people’s labor) and we’d be even more messed up.
Yeah, Every man a law unto himself. /sarc
“That might counter the perpetual legislative motion machine that constantly churns out new laws so politicians look like they’re working.”
Yeah. No kidding.
What had always bothered me with that cliche sausage metaphor is: the end result of sausage making should be something we actually like.
🤠
I like Jonathan-Houston’s idea of a super majority to push the limit further than ten years, but to make a law permanent I think they should have to have a unanimous vote.
An additional requirement ought to be that the scope of legislation be limited. Otherwise, you will have an omnibus bill that locks the laws in for another X years on 50%+1 votes or something like the continuing resolutions we have going now for the budget where they would kick the can down the road every so often.
Agreed. My second thought was “Now, how could the D.C. SOBs game the system despite this new structure?” I wouldn’t want them to be able to pass some work around that props up some law indefinitely. Maybe law control isn’t the answer, any more than gun control is an answer? Maybe the solution should center on the lawmakers thelmselves?
Serving in Congress should be an honor and privilege, maybe even something of a sacrifice. It shouldn’t be a stepping stone to higher office, nor a permanent office itself. Serving should entail a little less enticement and a little more sacrifice; enough to attract capable people, but not so attractive that they’ll do anything to get there and stay there.
Term limits are one option, but doesn’t that just stir the swamp, not drain it? What if we raised the minimum ages from 25 and 30 to something like 50 and 55, for the House and Senate, respectively? They’d have to earn some kind of real living for years before glomming on to the federal nipple. Maybe add a lifetime maximum number of years someone can serve in elected office, across all offices (state, local, federal) combined?
There are examples of sunset and single subject laws in various states. I’m sure that if one wanted to figure out the best way to limit legislation, one could find something.
One thing, I’m sure your aware of it, is the way we have a 140 day biennial meeting of the legislature here in Texas. If the state wishes to get more done, then the governor has to call a special session and the legislature can only pass laws on the issues the governor chooses.
Thats a feature, not a bug. It allows the state to turn its subjects into felons without due process overnight.
Exactly.
It’s not biting the legislators and governor in the butt, but it will soon strike home to the LEOs and gun owners.
And it *won’t* bite them in the backside, since they have a lock on the electorate.
I can easily see NY being just fine with creating process felons. I will be *very* surprised if they attempt to address this issue with an extension on the due date, or some form of amnesty.
It may sound kinda cold, but I hope NY carries out their threat on this one. It may take this to expose that law for what it really is, gun seizure.
Perhaps then the rest of the country will wake the fuck up to their true Leftist ideals…
Not sure why this is such a big deal. The subjects of NY WANTED this. They have no place to complain now.
Can’t imagine they all “wanted” it, but far too many didn’t do enough to refuse to live with it.
Vote with your feet and wallets, folks. Still lots of room left in Wyoming. 🙂
Don,t invite them out here ! We have enough now !!!
It’s a big deal because on the federal level the same people will be deciding whether you’re allowed to have guns.
Congratulations, you win the most ignorant comment award for today. No one wanted this law aside from Andrew Cuomo; it was passed in the night – literally – immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting. The regular legislative processes were skipped via gubernatorial “message of necessity” to ram the legislation through. No input or feedback was sought, no one outside of the Governor’s circle was briefed.
The idea what those of us living in New York State “have no place to complain now” makes about as much sense as saying no one in America (including you) had a place to complain after Obama became President. After all, if he won twice, that must have been what America WANTED, right? It must have been what you WANTED, right?
So I guess Cuomo is king of new york then .
Apparently you have no representation worth a damn.
In the last state election for Governor, Cuomo won handily despite gun groups trying to get him bounced. Now, it’s true that his votes came largely from NYC and Albany rather than upstate but here’s the thing: the turnout upstate was pathetic.
The truth is, if everyone who owned a gun in NY had voted against him in that one election, he would have been trounced. But people can’t be bothered.
Not really. State politicians rushed the SAFE Act through after Newtown to appeal to NYC metro voters/sheeple. Almost the entire rest of NYS, including local governments and PDs, were like “WTF?”, but they’re a smaller voting bloc. Par for the course for NYS governance: cater to NYC at the expense of the rest of the state.
And don’t think “just move” is a solution for the long term with urban/rural population masses shifting and interstate migration spreading bad ideas from ban states.
“Legislative Sausage” is what you do with the remains of your government once you’ve executed your will under paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence. What do you do with the sausage once you’ve made it? You sell it to the crazy, evil, POS MFs that buy fetus parts and make food out of them. Who are they? We’re going to find out when the DOJ gets done with probing Planned Parenthood https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/us/politics/planned-parenthood-fetal-tissue-transfers-federal-investigation.html.
Ummm yeah I don’t think this was a mistake. I think this was the plan all along.
“Sorry kid it’s nothing personal. Truth is the game was rigged from the start.” Benny Fallout:New Vegas.
A truer statement about US politics has never been uttered. Government is the house in this case and the house ALWAYS wins.
They know exactly what they are doing.
The people sponsoring this sort of legislation try to avoid public input by twisting the process, because opponents (people who possess knowledge of the legislation’s topic) will say things that do not advance the sponsors’ agenda. If public input cannot be avoided, those carrying that unapproved message must be attacked and discredited during their allotted testimony time. Since subject matter knowledge is actively avoided, of course the resulting legislation contains flaws that render it unworkable.
Evan Low was Mayor of my city (and member of MAIG) before he ascended to California’s State Assembly to broaden his noxious attacks.
https://youtu.be/FJJy5ShmVDk
The SAFE act & related has nothing to do with guns, or even NY State. It’s simply positioning for Proconsul Cuomo-the-Younger’s presidential ambitions. So, it doesn’t have to make sense or work in any other sense.
/NY, The First Swamp
To understand NY State politics, simply remember it has the most developed and effective patronage system in the world, surpassing Russia, China, India, and even DC. NY State was a patronage and exploitation swamp before DC even existed.
Stand back. Professionals at work.
Albany – the state “capitol” – is the field admin office, while the actual power resides “down-state” around and about NYC. (This is part of why the Governor of NY State and Mayor of NY City are always in a pissing contest — they’re both trying to be in charge, simply from different office buildings. Plus, right now they have competing strategies for their presidential runs: DiBlazio as HerSelf’s purer heir, The Proconsul contrasting himself as the experienced economic pragmatist.)
NY State’s patronage / clientism is so sophisticated, they don’t even do one-party rule: some *d* party senators caucus with the *r* party, giving “the opposition” a nominal majority in that house. As a result everybody gets to rail about “those people”, and there’s about twice as much need for buying off votes to get anything done. Conveniently, this arrangement blocks anything from happening after the regular calls to clean up corruption in state government, and all sides can blame “those people” while the gravy-train rolls on.
– Every single thing the “state” administration does is for the PR, aimed at down-state statists, who form a political base. Up-State is just photo-op fodder. This makes NY State politics the ideal farm league for DC, which works the same. Also, down-state statists really think the run everything, so it’s a national, or pan-national perspective being appeased.
– Every single Up-State county passed a resolution against the SAFE act at the time; having exactly no legal standing, and provoking only the standard scorn and self-aggrandizement from down-state. Net, Cuomo-the-Younger’s response was: “See what idiots they are. This is why I *have to* do everything myself.”
– From time to time Up-State threatens to secede. Down-state inevitably screeches about “taking more money in services than they pay in taxes”, then backs off when Up-State says: “OK, we’ll do that.” Rarely Down-State threatens to secede, again backing off immediately when Up-State says: “OK, let’s do this.”
The one thing they can’t stand even more than the yahoos and yokels in the hinterlands, is being unable to lord over the yahoos and yokels in the hinterlands. Again, just like DC.
– Every single thing the state government does is easily predicted and understood in terms of Proconsul Cuomo-the-Younger’s presidential aspirations. He backed off and tried, a little, to actually do some good for the state when it was inevitably HerSelf for 8 upcoming years, capping off his political possibilities. When The Orange Crush actually won, The Proconsul got right back on his hobby horse, aiming to be the viable alternative in 2020.
This should be the cut and paste response anytime an article about New York’s gun laws is posted on this website. It’s perfect.
“How the Legislative Sausage is Made in New York”
Hey, it’s New York. Just because it’s long and brown don’t make it sausage, no matter what Gov. Mussolini says about it.