Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul angrily responded to the Supreme Court ruling overturning her state’s gun law that required individuals to show “proper cause” to obtain a concealed carry permit in a Thursday address.
The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Keith M. Corlett, challenged the state regulation requiring “proper cause” to obtain a license to carry handguns in public. The Court struck down the law Thursday, ruling that proper cause “violates the Fourteenth Amendment” by preventing law-abiding citizens from keeping and bearing arms for self-defense purposes.
Hochul blasted the decision of the “politicized Supreme Court” that New York “must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation.” She claimed the Court has “taken away” the state’s right to implement “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership.
“We’re not powerless in this situation. We’re not going to cede our rights that easily, despite the best efforts of the politicized Supreme Court of the United States of America,” she began. “No longer can we strike the balance … Shocking. Absolutely shocking that they have taken away our right to have reasonable restrictions. We can have restrictions on speech. You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. But somehow there’s no restrictions allowed on the Second Amendment. This is New York, we don’t back down. We fight back.”
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“I’m sorry this dark day has come,” she continued. (RELATED: ‘No More Mass Shootings’: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Laments Mass Shooting)
She criticized the Court for allegedly wanting to return to the year 1788 when the Constitution was ratified, incorrectly claiming that the only weapons at the time were muskets.
“I’m prepared to go back to muskets,” she said. “I don’t think they envisioned the high capacity assault weapon magazines intended for battlefields.”
When the Second Amendment was ratified, the most common types of firearms were the musket and the flintlock pistol, including the blunderbuss short-ranged musket and British Sea Service Pistol, according to the Washington Post. Some citizens owned a dueling pistol which were standardized, and carried a ball of 48 to the pound.
Hochul signed a slew of gun control legislation in June raising the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle to 21, strengthen the state’s red flag laws, make it more difficult to purchase semi-automatic weapons and ban body armor sales except for those in select professions.
President Joe Biden has repeated the false claim that an individual could not purchase a cannon in the late 18th century. The Washington Post gave his statement four Pinocchios in a June 28, 2021, piece, saying there was no federal law about the types of firearms a private citizen could own and that they were permitted to own a cannon.
He then claimed that cannons were outlawed 20 years after the Revolutionary War, which is still incorrect, the Washington Post reported.