NY overhauls its handgun rules in effort to preserve some key limits
ALBANY, N.Y. – New York lawmakers approved a sweeping overhaul Friday of the state’s handgun licensing rules, seeking to preserve some limits on firearms after the Supreme Court ruled that most people have a right to carry a handgun for personal protection.
The measure, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul after passing both chambers by wide margins, is almost sure to draw more legal challenges from gun rights advocates who say the state is still putting too many restrictions on who can get guns and where they can carry them.
Hochul, a Democrat, called the Democrat-controlled Legislature back to Albany to work on the law after last week’s high-court ruling overturning the state’s longstanding licensing restrictions.
Backers said the law, which takes effect Sept. 1, strikes the right balance between complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling and keeping weapons out of the hands of people likely to use them recklessly or with criminal intent.
But some Republican lawmakers, opposed to tighter restrictions, argued the law violated the constitutional right to bear arms. They predicted it too would end up being overturned.
Among other things, the state’s new rules will require people applying for a handgun license to turn over a list of their social media accounts so officials could verify their “character and conduct.”
Applicants will have to show they have “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.”
As part of that assessment, applicants have to turn over a list of social media accounts they’ve maintained in the past three years.
“Sometimes, they’re telegraphing their intent to cause harm to others,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference.
Gun rights advocates and Republican leaders were incensed, saying the legislation not only violated the Second Amendment, but also privacy and free speech rights.
“New Yorkers’ constitutional freedoms were just trampled on,” state Republican Chair Nick Langworthy said.
The bill approved by lawmakers doesn’t specify whether applicants will be required to provide licensing officers with access to private social media accounts not visible to the
remains were found in the span of a week.
Experts say climate change and drought have led to the lake dropping to its lowest level since it was full about 20 years ago.
As water levels drop at both Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream on the Arizona-Utah line, states in the U.S. West increasingly face deeper cuts to their supply from the Colorado River. The lower levels also impact hydropower produced at Hoover
Dam and Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said last month that the agency would take action to protect the system if the seven states in the Colorado River basin don’t quickly come up with a way to cut the use of up to 4 million acrefeet of water – more than Arizona and Nevada’s share combined.
An acre-foot is about 325,850 gallons (about 1.23 million liters). An average household uses onehalf to one acre-foot of water a year.
The two states, California and
Mexico already have enacted voluntary and mandatory cuts. Water from some reservoirs in the upper basin – Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah – has been released to prop up Lake Powell.
Farmers use a majority of the river’s supply.