New York City has long been hostile toward the citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. They don’t think you should be able to do any of that.
Since most of us don’t live in the Big Apple, it’s not a huge deal. It’s wrong, of course, but few of us are going to lose a moment’s sleep over it. That is unless we’re going to New York.
See, there has never been a mechanism for people from outside the city to get a permit to lawfully carry inside the city. You just couldn’t do it, and that’s a problem.
Besides the rights issue, there’s the fact that tourists are favored targets for many types of criminals. They’re more likely to be carrying cash and expensive cameras, for one thing, and they’re also more likely to be focused on the buildings and other sights and not the people around them.
But NYC officials just didn’t care.
Then they got sued by GOA and Newsmax host Carl Higbie. As a result, they’ve now changed the rules.
GOA’s senior vice president Erich Pratt had this to say on the decision:
“This is great news for the untold millions of Americans who either work or visit New York every year. It’s critical that everyone can exercise their inherent right to self-defense, but until now, anti-gunners in New York denied most Americans that basic right.
“We will continue to monitor local cases to ensure that NYPD indeed grants these permits to applicants in a timely and non-onerous manner. Otherwise, we will gladly file another lawsuit directed specifically at Mayor Adams and the NYPD.”
Unfortunately, it’s still not great.
This would require those seeking an out-of-state permit for NYC to follow pretty much all of the procedures that we’ve called onerous in the past, including submitting all of your social media to them for scrutiny. For those of us with a dark sense of humor, well, that might be more than a bit of a problem.
Further, and here’s the real catch as best as I can tell, you have to sit down and chat with the NYPD in person. This isn’t a massive problem for residents of the city or those from New York who commute into the city regularly, which is who this requirement was originally intended to cover. Nothing in the emergency rule changes this fact, which is a big problem.
In other words, unless you’re traveling to New York regularly, it’s still impractical to even bother with trying to carry lawfully in the city because you’re just not going to. No one is going to go to the city, sit down with NYPD investigators, chat with them about their permit application, then go home and wait six months for a permit. It’s also likely that officials know this and figure they can settle stuff down by issuing this rule and avoid the lawsuit, which would likely end up in the Supreme Court in a few years and have them get smacked around all over again.
But, and this is my opinion, they haven’t really changed anything.
If they do, then I’ll be impressed, and if they don’t, it sounds like Pratt and Gun Owners of America will be happy to…adjust their attitudes.
