<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1656618943768,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000172-3377-d6df-ad7a-3fffec390000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1656618943768,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000172-3377-d6df-ad7a-3fffec390000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_56618930", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1038980"} }); ","_id":"00000181-b62e-d578-a1dd-bebefd010000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video Embed
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared that she didn’t need any statistics to justify preventing people who qualify from acquiring concealed carry permits. Of course, she says that because she doesn’t have any statistics. In fact, the statistics show the opposite.
Hochul is outraged that the Supreme Court struck down New York’s ability to withhold concealed carry permits from qualified citizens unless they convinced the government they had a “proper cause” for acquiring one. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, the right to bear arms isn’t a “second-class right” that can be stripped from people unless they petition the government to exercise it. But Hochul disagrees because she thinks she must keep people safe.
Does she have proof that the law kept people safe? Of course not. When WRGB reported Anne McCloy asked if Hochul had “the numbers to show it’s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes,” Hochul dismissed the question outright. “I don’t need to have numbers,” Hochul said. “I don’t need to have a data point to say this.”
Hochul claims she doesn’t need those data points because she doesn’t have them. In fact, according to a report by Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott, concealed carry permit holders have a lower crime rate than police officers. As McCloy noted to Hochul, criminals and mass shooters aren’t going to go out and get a concealed carry permit before committing armed robbery or shooting up a grocery store.
But Hochul and New York Democrats will pretend that restricting concealed carry permits is important because of gun violence because the more restrictions on law-abiding citizens the better. Hochul’s office boasted to WRGB that New York has a lower homicide rate than GOP-run states with looser gun laws, such as Mississippi. (The homicides in GOP-run states are primarily an issue of homicides in Democratic-run cities, but Hochul wouldn’t dare mention that).
Hochul, like so many Democratic politicians before her and so many to come, wants to appear as if she is doing something to solve gun violence and so wants to restrict gun ownership for law-abiding citizens. The liberal gun control movement is one of feelings, not statistics or data or measurable success. Hochul knows her evidence-free claims will fly in a liberal enclave such as New York, but they won’t erase the Second Amendment.
