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NY: An agenda hides behind handgun fee
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
An agenda hides behind handgun fee
First published: Friday, January 30, 2004
What Governor Pataki has in mind for New York's more than 1 million handgun permit-holders is outrageous, defies common sense and deserves to be scrapped pronto.
The short item in the governor's budget proposal released a couple of weeks ago seemed to refer strictly to a revenue raiser -- namely, imposing for the first time a $100 state "fee" for a pistol permit.
Currently, the only fees upstate permit-holders must pay are for initial fingerprinting, and a separate filing charge with the county clerk where the holder resides. The county can also impose a modest charge for processing when handguns are added or subtracted from a permit.
That for the first time the state wants to stick up legal handgun owners without offering services or compensation in return is bad enough, but the totality of the proposed changes to penal law make it clear to me that the agenda goes far beyond raising about $31 million over 10 years.
"Initially, I think it started out as the state looking for revenue sources," says Tom King, the president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. "But, as we know, there are those in both political parties against guns, period." The governor's proposal shows that dramatically.
Changes to the penal law would include a $100 fee on new and renewal handgun licenses; a $25 fee for each permit amendment (adding or subtracting specific guns); a $100 fee on gunsmith and dealer licenses; a $25 fee on duplicate licenses, and a $25 fee on license transfers (from one county to another when the holder changes residence.)
Plus, statutory caps on local fees would be removed.
Which means, in effect, one stickup after another is being proposed.
That's not even the worst of it.
Right now, an upstate pistol permit is good for life. Believe me, an applicant goes through the torments of hell to get it, with classes, background checks, fingerprinting and character references required. It takes months. Additionally, any judge or even a justice of the peace can nullify a permit at any time for practically any indiscretion on the permit-holder's part.
No license-holder of any sort in New York is more vulnerable to the whims of an often hostile judiciary than a handgun permit holder.
Yet under the governor's plan, there would be a five-year expiration date to the permits. A somewhat shortened application process is recommended for renewals, but still, what this would do is create a monstrous annoyance for the permit holders, a costly reference-check obligation by local police departments, and a bureaucratic logjam for county clerks and issuing judges.
And for what?
For some phony feel-right legislation to satisfy a wrong-headed solution to a major societal ill: illegal gun violence on our city streets.
Consider: Licensed handgun-permit-holders in New York commit so few violent crimes "that they are statistically irrelevant," notes King.
So the safest, the most accountable, the most law-abiding citizens in the state are being punished under Pataki's proposal, instead of focusing on the real problem: illegal handguns and, especially, those who use them.
Illegal handguns in places like Albany are epidemic. They're stolen, or brought in from out of the state. It's not just the cops. Residents, too, are seeing more guns flashed than ever before.
Instead of wasting millions on our paranoia over imported terrorism infecting upstate cities, we ought to be concentrating instead on the home-grown terrorism in our neighborhoods and the guns that go with it.
In the meantime, leave the licensed handgun owner alone. No one is held to a higher level of scrutiny in this state.
Contact Fred LeBrun at 454-5453.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=213931&category=LEBRUN&BCCode=&newsdate=1/30/2004
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
First published: Friday, January 30, 2004
What Governor Pataki has in mind for New York's more than 1 million handgun permit-holders is outrageous, defies common sense and deserves to be scrapped pronto.
The short item in the governor's budget proposal released a couple of weeks ago seemed to refer strictly to a revenue raiser -- namely, imposing for the first time a $100 state "fee" for a pistol permit.
Currently, the only fees upstate permit-holders must pay are for initial fingerprinting, and a separate filing charge with the county clerk where the holder resides. The county can also impose a modest charge for processing when handguns are added or subtracted from a permit.
That for the first time the state wants to stick up legal handgun owners without offering services or compensation in return is bad enough, but the totality of the proposed changes to penal law make it clear to me that the agenda goes far beyond raising about $31 million over 10 years.
"Initially, I think it started out as the state looking for revenue sources," says Tom King, the president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. "But, as we know, there are those in both political parties against guns, period." The governor's proposal shows that dramatically.
Changes to the penal law would include a $100 fee on new and renewal handgun licenses; a $25 fee for each permit amendment (adding or subtracting specific guns); a $100 fee on gunsmith and dealer licenses; a $25 fee on duplicate licenses, and a $25 fee on license transfers (from one county to another when the holder changes residence.)
Plus, statutory caps on local fees would be removed.
Which means, in effect, one stickup after another is being proposed.
That's not even the worst of it.
Right now, an upstate pistol permit is good for life. Believe me, an applicant goes through the torments of hell to get it, with classes, background checks, fingerprinting and character references required. It takes months. Additionally, any judge or even a justice of the peace can nullify a permit at any time for practically any indiscretion on the permit-holder's part.
No license-holder of any sort in New York is more vulnerable to the whims of an often hostile judiciary than a handgun permit holder.
Yet under the governor's plan, there would be a five-year expiration date to the permits. A somewhat shortened application process is recommended for renewals, but still, what this would do is create a monstrous annoyance for the permit holders, a costly reference-check obligation by local police departments, and a bureaucratic logjam for county clerks and issuing judges.
And for what?
For some phony feel-right legislation to satisfy a wrong-headed solution to a major societal ill: illegal gun violence on our city streets.
Consider: Licensed handgun-permit-holders in New York commit so few violent crimes "that they are statistically irrelevant," notes King.
So the safest, the most accountable, the most law-abiding citizens in the state are being punished under Pataki's proposal, instead of focusing on the real problem: illegal handguns and, especially, those who use them.
Illegal handguns in places like Albany are epidemic. They're stolen, or brought in from out of the state. It's not just the cops. Residents, too, are seeing more guns flashed than ever before.
Instead of wasting millions on our paranoia over imported terrorism infecting upstate cities, we ought to be concentrating instead on the home-grown terrorism in our neighborhoods and the guns that go with it.
In the meantime, leave the licensed handgun owner alone. No one is held to a higher level of scrutiny in this state.
Contact Fred LeBrun at 454-5453.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=213931&category=LEBRUN&BCCode=&newsdate=1/30/2004
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
Comments
(CNSNews.com) - Journalists covering wars or other conflicts for the New York Times are no longer allowed to carry a firearm while on assignment, according to a policy adopted by the company this week.
The new policy, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was apparently put into place Wednesday following an internal debate over the issue. A Times reporter in Iraq, Dexter Filkins, was found carrying a gun last year, the Journal reported.
"The carrying of a weapon, for whatever reason, jeopardizes a journalist's status as neutral," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis told CNSNews.com. "For the same reason, it's also important that Times journalists do not travel with or accompany other journalists they know to be carrying weapons."
The policy was developed internally by senior editors in consultation with the paper's bureaus, Mathis said. It applies to reporters, photographers and other editorial staff "who are on assignment from the Times to cover a war or a civil conflict," she said.
The debate over journalists carrying guns is not new. Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera stirred up the issue when he carried a gun while covering the war on terror in Afghanistan.
Earlier this week in Iraq, two CNN employees died from gunshot wounds when their vehicle was ambushed. A third employee in another vehicle was injured. A security adviser traveling with the convoy was credited for saving the lives of the other journalists and employees.
"There is no doubt in my mind that if our security adviser had not returned fire, everyone in our vehicle would have been killed," said CNN correspondent Michael Holmes in a statement. "This was not an attempted robbery; they were clearly trying to take us out."
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Lott, author of "The Bias against Guns," said the attack on CNN workers is just one example of the threats journalists face in war zones.
"My concern is that the New York Times is being driven more by appearance than what is actually necessary for the safety of their reporters," Lott said. "It's not the type of image the New York Times wants to give out. They're very politically correct on these things, and they want to be perceived that way."
The Times' decision didn't surprise Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. He said, "Hypocrisy has never bothered the New York Times."
The Times has long been a target of criticism for its anti-gun editorials. The paper was also accused of hypocrisy when it was discovered that its former publisher, Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, had a permit to carry a handgun.
Sulzberger, whose son "Pinch" Sulzberger now runs the paper, was among several influential New Yorkers with handgun permits whose names were leaked to the press in 1976.
http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200401/NAT20040130b.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
That Pataki would view gun owners as a source of revenue illustrates how screwed up lefty socialists are. First, they make it all but impossible to possess the tools of self-preservation; then they decide that since one possesses such an evil tool, one should be singled out to bear the burden of monetary extortion simply to keep it.
Wonder when Rob Krott will apply at the NYT?
If you know it all; you must have been listening.<br>WEAR EAR PROTECTION!
Pack slow, fall stable, pull high, hit dead center.
Don't fly the river!
We'll be spending the next 6-9 months putting the house in salable shape. If the market value holds, we should walk away with enough money to move to another state and have a significant down payment for another house. One nice thing about her specialty of geriatrics, she can get a job almost anywhere. Too bad my field isn't going to be quite so easy.
Woods
revenue opportunities to be exploited to the screaming point as will
every tax opportunity. Govts will become creative in seeking out means
to keep afloat. Also don't forget we are going to have to pay for a war, the bennies for the invasion of the illegals and for the growing unemployed.
Greg
Former
USMC
ANGLICO
That Pataki would view gun owners as a source of revenue illustrates how screwed up lefty socialists are.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. What does a state do when they need to come up with bucks, but do not want to offend the majority with more taxes? Raise cigarette taxes. No one except smokers ever has a problem with the tax hike, matter of fact, non smokers usually applaud such actions. And since the vast majority of a population does not smoke, elected officials do not have to worry about suffering political reprecussions due to the new tax.
Gun owners who have a permit to carry, are VERY MUCH in the minority. So whats good for cigarette smokers, is good for gun owners.
"Waiting tables is what you know, making cheese is what I know-lets stick with what we know!"
-Jimmy the cheese man
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, not liberty to purchase power."
Benjamin Franklin, 1785
for ye that continue to support and defend those Gods deserve every jot and tittle of it...
And until we who are more intelligent then that finally say.."ENOUGH.."