Gillibrand Has Much Explaining to do at Today’s Buffalo Town Hall
Her campaign rhetoric promoting semi-auto rifle bans and U.S. Supreme Court packing contradicts WNY’s strong Second Amendment culture
October 9, 2019 – BUFFALO, N.Y. – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has many progressive sins to atone for at her 5 PM town hall meeting today at the Buffalo Irish Center. Throughout her failed Democrat presidential primary run, she made full-throated screams for such authoritarian infringements as bans on semi-automatic rifles and standard capacity magazines commonly owned by law-abiding citizens, and threats to pack the U.S. Supreme Court if the justices fail to rule her way on the Second Amendment.
“It’s a well-documented fact that Gillibrand went from a Second Amendment advocate during her time as a congressional representative, to a gun ban zealot as a U.S. Senator and Democrat presidential primary contender,” 2AWNY.COM Civil Rights Advocate Steve Felano said. “This clearly communicates to Western New Yorkers that Gillibrand prioritizes her lust for ever-increasing government power far above her duty to respect and defend the Second Amendment civil rights of all New Yorkers. At her Buffalo town hall today, 2AWNY.COM demands that Gillibrand apologize to constituents for her anti-Second Amendment civil rights rhetoric, abandon her futile efforts to oppress New Yorkers’ already highly restricted fundamental right to keep and bear arms, and return to a position of Second Amendment civil rights support.”
Speaking today, Gillibrand will completely ignore the fact that the type of New York-style gun control she’s been screeching for on the national stage has done absolutely zero to reduce so-called gun violence in Buffalo. In fact, said gun control has produced the exact opposite effect, significantly increasing the volume of homicides in the city. Indeed, the Buffalo News has reported that more people were killed in Buffalo in 2018 than in each of the prior three years. Will we hear about this today from Gillibrand? Of course not. When confronted with this inconvenient truth, Gillibrand will simply continue to take a page out to the far-left progressive playbook and advocate for more of the same type of unconstitutional gun control policies that have already been tried but continue to fail at every level.
Furthermore, the most contemporary data analysis clearly shows that the type of highly restrictive gun control supported by Gillibrand, centering on magazine capacity limits and bans on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ is not consistently related to overall homicide or suicide rates. For Gillibrand, semi-automatic rifle and standard capacity magazine bans are not about public safety. Such unconstitutional infringements are about willfully deceiving the public via emotional manipulation in service of further mass liberty reduction through ineffective gun control.
Gillibrand’s public disinformation event today notwithstanding, and despite the best efforts of progressive hoplophobes supporting the failed Democrat presidential primary candidate, New York State’s gun control scheme is on track to be dismantled in the courts throughout 2020. 2AWNY.COM has already successfully reversed the first ever SAFE Act conviction this year in New York State Supreme Court. Next, the SAFE Act will be overturned on constitutional grounds soon after the landmark case NYSRPA v. NYC is decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is highly likely to result in strict scrutiny being installed as the required legal standard for assessing Second Amendment cases. Following this, 2AWNY.COM will leverage this standard to dismantle the state’s unconstitutional pistol permitting regime via the case Libertarian Party of Erie County v. Cuomo, which was persuasively argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February 2019. The remainder of New York State’s onerous gun control program will likewise be repealed via this method, as none of its various anti-liberty components are capable of withstanding the rigors of strict scrutiny in the courts. As all this occurs, significant components of the SAFE Act will continue to go without enforcement, as evidenced by the fact that all 17 Western New York counties comprise a SAFE Act Seven-Round Limit Non-Enforcement Zone.
To learn more about any of the above, please contact Steve Felano at (518) 852-1863 or sfelano@2AWNY.com.
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2AWNY is a force multiplier for the numerous Second Amendment civil rights advocacy enterprises forming the backbone of Western New York’s vibrant gun culture. We act as a 2A news and information distribution, policy analysis, and organizational driver for the many interest groups seeking to defend and expand Second Amendment civil rights throughout the region. 2AWNY is dedicated to assisting in the organization, promotion, and funding of legal challenges to the unconstitutional New York State gun control regime. We seek to make Western New York the epicenter of New York State’s Second Amendment civil rights renaissance. Learn more at WWW.2AWNY.COM.