New York fights back on guns, abortion
>>NEW YORK: A week after the US Supreme Court issued monumental rulings loosening restrictions on carrying guns and overturning the constitutional right to abortion, New York state enacted sweeping measures designed to blunt the decisions’ effects.
In an extraordinary session convened by Gov Kathy Hochul that began Thursday and carried late into Friday evening, the Legislature adopted a new law placing significant restrictions on the carrying of handguns and passed an amendment that would initiate the process of enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.
The new legislation illustrates the growing distance between a conservative-led court that has reasserted its influence in American political life and blue states such as New York — one of the most left-leaning in the nation, where all three branches of government are controlled by Democrats and President Joe Biden easily triumphed over Donald Trump in 2020.
As Republican-led states race rightward, the New York Legislature’s moves this week provided a preview of an intensifying clash between the court and Democratic states that will probably play out for years to come.
“We’re not going backwards,” Ms Hochul, a Democrat, said in Albany on Friday and who later that evening signed the gun bill into law. “They may think they can change our lives with the stroke of a pen, but we have pens, too.”
“I am standing here to protect freedom and liberty here in the state of New York,” she added.
The state’s new gun law bars the carrying of handguns in many public settings such as subways and buses, parks, hospitals, stadiums and day cares. Guns will be off-limits on private property unless the property owner indicates that he or she expressly allows them. At the last minute, lawmakers added Times Square to the list of restricted sites.
The law also requires permit applicants to undergo 16 hours of training on the handling of guns and two hours of firing-range training, as well as an in-person interview and a written exam.
Enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution will be more onerous. Amending the state constitution is a yearslong process, which starts with passage by the legislature. Then, after a general election, another session of the legislature must pass the amendment before it is presented to voters in a ballot referendum.
But lawmakers took a first step Friday when the senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which along with guaranteeing rights to abortion and access to contraception, prohibited the government from discriminating against anyone based on a list of qualifications including race, ethnicity, national origin, disability or sex — specifically noting sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy among protected conditions.