Politics

‘I Don’t Need To Have Numbers’: Gov. Hochul Trying To Pass Strict Gun Control Says She Has No Evidence To Support Her

D-NY Gov. Kathy Hochul pushes for gun control [Twitter Screenshot Anne McCloy]

[Twitter Screenshot Anne McCloy]

Brianna Lyman News and Commentary Writer
Font Size:

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she doesn’t “need to have numbers” to back up her strict gun control proposals.

Hochul is set to convene a special session Thursday to push through new tighter gun control restrictions after the Supreme Court recently overturned a nearly century-old law that restricted concealed carry permits. Among the proposals include banning firearms from government buildings, courthouses, hospitals and schools. Another proposal would ban firearms at any private business unless the business has a sign explicitly stating guns are allowed, CBS 6 Albany reported.

Speaking at a press briefing Wednesday, Hochul said after the high court overturned the law, gun owners would carry more.

“All of a sudden now you’re on the streets. Now you’re going to bars, this is not the Wild West, this is New York State,” Hochul said.

A reporter then asked whether Hochul had any data to support her gun control push. (RELATED: NY Gov. Hochul Says Law-Abiding Gun Owners Make People Feel ‘Very Unsafe’)

“Do you have the numbers to show that it’s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes? Because the lawful gun owner will say that you’re attacking the wrong person, that it’s really the people getting the guns illegally that are causing the violence not the people going and getting the permit legally. Do you have the numbers?”

“I don’t need to have numbers. I don’t need to have a data point to say this. I know that I have a responsibility to the people of this state to have sensible gun safety laws, and this one was not devised by the Hochul administration. It comes out of an administration from 1908. I don’t need a data point to say I have a responsibility to protect the people of this state.”

“Someone who is going to go do a mass shooting or something like that may not go and get a conceal carry permit,” the reporter pushed back.

“I never said there’s any correlation between our solution here and the Buffalo case,” Hochul said.

The Supreme Court recently struck down a gun law that required individuals to show “proper cause” in order to obtain a concealed carry permit.

The case centered on two individuals from Rensselaer County who applied for their concealed carry permits but were denied for having “failed to show ‘proper cause’ to carry a firearm in public for the purpose of self-defense, because [they] did not demonstrate a special need for self-defense that distinguished [them] from the general public.”

The court ruled 6-3 that the “proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.”

Hochul said it was  “outrageous that at a moment of national reckoning on gun violence, the Supreme Court has recklessly struck down a New York law that limits those who can carry concealed weapons.”