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Gun law passed in haste a waste

Published 9:06 pm, Saturday, March 23, 2013
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Like the renowned wizard he so much resembles, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a great and powerful man.

I believe he has the power to change the meaning of words. He must have, otherwise what's been coming out of his mouth this last week would be remarkably close to arrogant gibberish. And that can't be right.

So when he insisted, as he did with the press corps, that back in January his notorious gun bill was not passed in haste, not, not, not, even though we saw it happen, it took us aback. I mean, it was only two months ago and it happened right in front of our noses: The bait-and-switch with polls in the aftermath of the Newtown showing widespread but unspecific public support for stricter gun controls, which the governor took as a mandate to throw any garbage he wanted in a bill to ram through; the lack of any specifics being considered; the "message of necessity," overnight passage, no public hearings or involvement; howling legislators. The very definition of haste.

Well, at least that's Webster's definition. Obviously, Cuomo's is different. So I suppose what he must mean is if he gave his somewhat trained aides gun control legislation as a project to research and they made a couple of phone calls to the like-minded, and if he, Andrew Cuomo, thought about the subject off and on for a week or two, then anything that materialized in terms of law could not possibly be done hastily. "It was not hastily put together," he said. Could not have been, because it appropriately seasoned as legislation in the only place that matters, the wizard's brain.

Last week the governor had to noticeably back-pedal on a major provision of that supposedly thoughtfully assembled gun law, reducing the maximum legal size of a semiautomatic magazine from 10 to seven rounds.

Apparently his somewhat trained aides over the course of "many, many weeks" of research had failed to discover that seven-round magazines for many handguns, for example, don't exist. Nor are manufacturers willing to create a New York specific magazine. So, as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver delicately put it, to "accommodate commerce" that part of the law will sort of go back to the way it was for the last 20 years. Otherwise, a lot of reasonably irritated pistol permit holders in New York state, through no fault of their own, would be flirting with illegality as well as suddenly owning useless, very expensive guns, courtesy of the great and powerful.

Cuomo is a governor never known to leave well enough alone. Instead of simply accepting that his dumb and unnecessary little foray into reducing magazines by three rounds should just be abandoned, he's come up with an idiotic compromise to save face. You'll be able to continue to buy 10-round magazines, but can only load seven rounds unless you're at a sanctioned shooting event. Although a final decision on even that is on hold until the budget passes.

That means the only people who will be harassed by Cuomo's non-hastily assembled magazine law are demonstrably the most law-abiding citizens in the state, pistol permit holders. While the demented and felonious among us, whom you will recall were supposed to be the thrust of Cuomo's new gun initiative, will skate.

Did I say Cuomo back-pedaled? He would never use a word like that unless it had a special meaning. Something like, "back-pedal: 1. to go forward with renewed speed and brazen purpose, only in a different direction; 2. a technical correction." If he can classify changing the magazine law from seven back to 10 rounds as a "grammatical error," anything's possible.

Although small wonder a veteran law enforcement lawyer I spoke to, one of the top in the state, said even after wading through the poorly written and ill-conceived NY SAFE Act bills that became law, he was left wondering, "what are they thinking?" Or that in the papers filed Thursday by the NRA and others challenging the law in federal court, the word "irrational" is used more than once to refer to both language and concepts promoted by the law.

What is increasingly clear is that lashing himself to this totally unnecessary gun control legislation was a huge tactical error that has directly led to plummeting poll numbers. The arrogant manner in which this law was passed, with its phony message of necessity and its disregard for upstaters, remains as freshly irritating as the law itself.

So no matter how much the governor wants his own dictionary, "haste" is a word that will be forever attached to this law. Indeed, it was very much part of the governor's strategy for getting it passed, before the public, the lobbyists, the legislators themselves, woke up. Now they're awake.

In years to come, if chunks aren't thrown out by the courts, these gun laws will be viewed much like Rockefeller's drug laws: The laws that every administration down the line looks to topple out of fairness and common sense.

And that's not exactly the legacy this wizard is looking for.

flebrun@timesunion.com 518-454-5453

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