The #1 thing that can ruin a good gun is a bad trigger. No matter how accurate you can make the rest of your gun, if the trigger isn’t well designed then there’s no way the shooter can control it with enough finesse to actually get a good grouping. New York doesn’t care.
The New York City Police Department purposefully issues their officers handguns with extremely heavy triggers to try and deter them from using their firearms, but as a side effect the officers are wildly inaccurate and tend to hit innocent bystanders.
Seeing the clear positive impact of heavy triggers among the NYPD, New York Democrats are trying to mandate the same thing be done to every civilian firearm in the state.
The bill currently under consideration, S3444, is ostensibly designed to keep children under five years old from being able to operate a firearm. It demands that all firearms sold within the state include mechanisms to prevent children from firing the firearm. From the bill:
SUCH DEVICES OR MECHANISMS SHALL INCLUDE, BUT NOT BE LIMITED TO: THE CAPACITY TO ADJUST THE TRIGGER RESISTANCE TO AT LEAST A TEN POUND PULL, THE CAPACITY TO ALTER THE FIRING MECHANISM SO THAT AN AVERAGE FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD’S HANDS ARE TOO SMALL TO OPERATE THE PISTOL OR REVOLVER, OR THE CAPACITY TO REQUIRE A SERIES OF MULTIPLE MOTIONS IN ORDER TO FIRE THE PISTOL OR REVOLVER.
I admit that they might be approaching this with the best of intentions. Accidental deaths of children are a terrible thing, but as we’ve seen time and again the number of accidental child deaths involving firearms are amazingly small and continue to decline.
I’d argue that a better use of their time would be to mandate some basic firearms safety in schools the same way that New York currently does drug and sex education, but I’m not as enlightened as the ruling class in New York apparently.
There’s two huge problems with this proposal. The most obvious issue: accuracy.
Lighter triggers might make it more easy for firearms to accidentally discharge in untrained hands, but it also makes the guns more accurate. As any firearms instructor can tell you one of the biggest issues with accuracy in handguns is sympathetic squeezing — even though you just want to move your trigger finger, the other fingers in your hand will tend to squeeze as well.
Squeezing all the fingers in your hand will cause the barrel to move and your shot to swing wide, missing the target. So instead of shooting the murderer coming towards you with a hatchet you’ve now shot the pregnant innocent bystander or the proverbial school bus full of nuns. You’ve made the entire public into NYPD officers, and their accuracy is miserable (18 percent hit rate).
Other states mandate trigger pull weight requirements for firearms sold in their borders, but ten pounds is about twice what other states require. More weight means more inaccuracy and higher probability of killing innocent bystanders.
The second problem is for Americans with disabilities.
Some people only have the grip strength of a typical five-year-old. I know a number of people with disabilities who enjoy the shooting sports specifically because it puts them on an even playing field with everyone else and allows them to compete just as effectively no matter what disability they may have. This bill would severely impact their ability to enjoy the shooting sports and remove a little bit of light from their life.
At the moment there are five sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, all Democrats: José M. Serrano, Jamaal Bailey, Liz Krueger, James Sanders Jr., and Daniel L. Squadron.
Normally the current state of the Senate would mean that this bill would be dead on arrival, with a majority of Republican Senators capable of blocking the Democrats. But as we saw with the NY SAFE Act the New York Republicans are about as reliable as La La Land winning Best Picture.
Stay tuned as we bring you continuing coverage of the decline and fall of the Second Amendment in New York.