By Joyce M. Miles
The Tonawanda News
LOCKPORT —
The county Legislature is calling on local members of the New York State Legislature to help block a trio of gun-control measures proposed by downstate legislators.
Legislators John Syracuse, R-Newfane, and John Ceretto, R-Lewiston, put up resolutions Tuesday denouncing three proposed state laws that affect gun ownership. The resolutions were approved by unanimous vote of the county body.
One state bill calls for mandatory renewal of pistol permits every five years. Another calls for a ban on magazine-fed pistols, magazine-fed semiautomatic rifles and pump-action shotguns. Another redefines the sale of guns between private citizens as “gun show” and subjects those sales to state oversight.
Individually and together, the bills represent an assault on New Yorkers’ Second Amendment right to bear arms, Syracuse declared.
“They’re a collection that really plays on the fears of the public,” he said. The bill regarding pistol permitting particularly “treats the right to bear arms as a privilege granted by the state of New York — and it’s not.”
The pistol permitting bill would require mandatory renewal of permits every five years. Currently permit holders apply once and keep the permit for life, so long as they’re law-abiding.
Niagara County Clerk Wayne Jagow said a regular renewal provision would be onerous to both pistol owners and the county.
Before permit renewal, pistol owners would have to submit to a new round of background checks and pay the permit fee, currently $105.
There are nearly 27,000 pistol permit holders in Niagara County now, Jagow said; the number increases by about 500 a year. To require the county to check on all those permits every five years “would swamp our office,” he said. “I’d be coming to (the legislature) asking for additional staffing. ... This seems to be nothing more than a way (for the government) to accumulate a little bit more money.”
Sheriff James Voutour said a frequent permitting requirement would burden his office, too. The spirit of the proposed law seems misguided, he added, considering crimes involving guns are committed mostly by people who don’t have pistol permits.
If the intent of the law is to crack down on gun crimes, the smarter thing would be to toughen sanctions against those who commit them, suggested Legislator Richard E. Updegrove, R-Lockport.
“That would get at the real problem,” he said. “It is absolutely obnoxious, at a time when we’re struggling with the budget, to have (state) legislators try to impose this type of legislation on taxpayers.”
The proposed law calling for a ban on certain types of long guns — by classifying them as “assault weapons” due to their characteristics, such as rifle-barrel shroud, pistol grip, thumbhole grip or telescoping — is also clearly a shot at denying citizens’ rights, according to Syracuse. It would have “a chilling effect on the legal ownership of firearms ... while imposing new bureaucratic rules that criminals would ignore with impunity,” his resolution said.
A proposed law expanding the definition of “gun show” to include transactions between private citizens would hamper gun raffles, which local fire companies, veterans organizations and others hold routinely as fundraisers, Ceretto said.
“This bill would make it so costly, so difficult (to raise money that way). This bill affects sporting and other groups that are thriving in Niagara County,” he said. “It goes against our core values. If it goes through, what’s next?”
According to Syracuse, more than a dozen gun-control proposals have been added to the state Assembly calendar in recent months.
The bills calling for regular pistol permit renewal and redefinition of gun show are sponsored in the Assembly by member Amy Paulin of Scarsdale, Westchester County.
Regular pistol-permit renewal already is required in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties.
Paulin’s permit bill passed in the Assembly last year and died in the Senate this past January.
The bill expanding the definition of “assault weapon,” sponsored in the Assembly by three New York City-area members, met the same fate.
Both bills were reintroduced and are now sitting in committee. The only members of the Western New York delegation who favored them last year were Assembly members Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, and Crystal Peoples, D-Buffalo.
