Metro

Hochul signs new gun control laws after Buffalo, Texas mass shootings

The Empire State officially has new laws on the books aimed at curbing access to weapons that have been used in recent mass killings in Buffalo and Texas.

“I speak to you today as the governor of a state in mourning and the citizen of a nation in crisis … It just keeps happening. Shots ring out. Flags come down, and nothing ever changes — except here in New York.” Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday just before she signed into law 10 bills passed by state lawmakers last week in the wake of the mass shootings. 

The legislative action follows a May 14 massacre in Buffalo and another attack on May 24 in Uvalde, Texas that shared key details.

Both attacks were allegedly committed by socially-isolated teenagers who bought semi-automatic rifles after turning 18, which they then showed off online before unleashing their homicidal rampages. 

People under 21 years old can no longer buy semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15-style weapon that the Buffalo shooter, an avowed white supremacist, allegedly used to massacre 10 people at a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood weeks ago.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law aimed at curbing access to weapons that have been used in recent mass killings in Buffalo and Texas. Matthew McDermott

“I support the new gun control laws, but I still think 21 is too young to have an assault rifle. A 21-year-old is still a kid,” Seymour Uvell, 91, of Manhattan told The Post on Monday.

New Yorkers also face stiffer barriers to buying bulletproof vests and body armor like the ones that reportedly protected the Buffalo shooter during the rampage from a bullet fired by a heroic security guard. 

“One of my colleagues on the other side of the house stood up and, in all earnestness, read a letter from a constituent who said:  ‘How could we not allow people to buy bulletproof vests?’ He puts her child in a bullet proof vest to go to school,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in disbelief at the Bronx event while dismissing concerns about how the new law would affect ordinary New Yorkers.

Another new law aims to battle online hate by requiring social media companies to have policies in place to respond to potential threats. 

New Yorkers hold an anti-gun violence banner while marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to support survivors of shootings. Ryan Rahman/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

“We’re going to establish a task force on social media and violent extremism to investigate the role of social media in promoting domestic terror,” Hochul said of a new panel, established by another new law, that state Attorney General Letitia James will oversee.

The gunman made a violent threat at his former high school but was nonetheless allowed to buy a semi-automatic weapon after turning 18 despite the state’s red flag law, which was tweaked by newly signed legislation.

A threat of mass harm is now a crime punishable by up to a year in jail under another bill signed by Hochul on Monday.  

Other new rules on the books are aimed at preventing gun crimes more associated with gang violence that have occurred at a faster clip in recent years within the five boroughs.

Microstamping technology enabled by a new law could make it easier for law enforcement to track future crimes through identifying marks that would match a firearm with an expended cartridge left at a crime scene. 

State and local agencies will have to increase reporting on gun seizures to help battle the so-called Iron Pipeline bringing firearms into New York from states with looser gun laws like Georgia. 

Other measures closed past loopholes on the possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines and guns that evade existing restrictions through the use of arm braces rather than standard rifle stocks. 

Democrats have called on the federal government to take additional action on gun control, such as reviving a ban on assault weapons that expired nearly two decades ago. 

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie struck a pessimistic note Monday about the likelihood that anything will change nationwide in the short term after additional shootings in Tennessee and Philadelphia over the weekend.

Law enforcement officials at the scene of a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market at Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street on Sunday, May 15, 2022, in Buffalo, NY. Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

“I’d like to remind us all about this country’s obscene fascination with guns … [I] hate to say it. I know this isn’t the last time we’re going to talk about it. This is the last time we’re going to be grieving with families until this country looks itself in the mirror and says ‘enough is enough,'” the Bronx Democrat said. 

Republicans in Congress, however, have resisted the idea of imposing any new restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms – a view echoed by their counterparts in Albany ahead of elections this November. 

New York Democrats cited that resistance while using the gun control push to vilify the GOP at the bill signing ceremony in the Bronx on Monday.

“We cycle through disbelief and grief and yes, anger only to be disappointed again and again and again in government  – No, not government, the members of a feckless, spineless, reckless party known as the GOP,” James, the state’s chief legal officer, said Monday at the Bronx event. 

Ordinary New Yorkers told the Post Monday that they hope new laws will help curb gun violence amid an ongoing surge in shootings coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic and criminal justice reforms approved by Albany Democrats in recent years. 

“I am scared of gun violence in New York City — everyone is. Every day I leave the house and don’t know if I’ll go home to my family,” grandmother Radha Roma, 52, of Brooklyn said.  

Additional reporting by Jack Morphet