Last month we wrote about Manhattan Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal’s efforts to put an end to high school rifle, trap and archery clubs in New York State. Scores of programs that include boys, girls and disabled students. Programs that exist far outside her west side Assembly district. As the Buffalo News’s Rod Watson writes,
It is anti-gun zealots like this who make life so easy for the National Rifle Association. Every time you’re tempted to think the NRA is crying wolf to gin up support when it suggests “they” want to take away everyone’s guns, along comes more proof that the organization might be right.
Bight be?
Ordinarily, this measure from Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal might be considered a classic “one-house bill” doomed to go no further. But with the very real possibility of Democrats also taking over the State Senate – depending on the whims of one mercurial senator – and Gov. Andrew Cuomo ever eager to ban any gun he can find, this threat to shooting sports is all too real.
Watson’s no fan of the NRA, but it’s hard to argue with them when he looks around the state at the never-ending push by anti-gun Democrats who’d like nothing more than to outlaw every gun in the state.
I used to consider the NRA’s warnings like the cover of Superman comic books, which invariably indicated the superhero was dead. But somehow, once you finished the edition, he was very much alive and you knew you had been duped just to get your money. The NRA often operates the same way: No matter which political party is in control, it’s the most perilous time in history for gun rights, so send money now.
But who can dismiss the NRA’s warnings after the SAFE Act, New York’s handgun recertification fiasco, and now this?
They’ll use any rationale — no matter how ridiculous — to justify each new restriction.
…Rosenthal has cited the fact that Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 in Parkland, Fla., had participated in a school rifle program as justification for her ban.
But that makes about as much sense as getting rid of driver training classes because a madman drove a van onto sidewalks in Toronto a few weeks ago, killing 10. Or banning chemistry because those classes might have helped Pendleton’s Timothy McVeigh concoct the truck bomb that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City.
Looks like Watson’s eyes have been opened.
Gun culture?
I’m more worried about a political culture that chases cheap headlines by victimizing law-abiding shooters. But I guess that’s to be expected because bills like Rosenthal’s are so much easier to write than doing something to actually prevent crime.