State Lawmakers Telling New York Gun Owners To Lock Them Up

The Democrat-controlled Assembly and Senate in New York have passed a bill that will require most parents to lock-up their guns.

According to the New York State Senate website,

Senate Bill S.2450A, sponsored by Senator Liz Krueger, will establish penalties for anyone who has a child under 16 in their home and who doesn’t properly store any firearm or render it incapable of being fired by using an appropriate gun-locking device.

The idea behind the legislation is to prevent incidents of misuse or violence involving children and guns. A similar law, already in effect, requires gun owners to lock up their guns if someone inside the home was not legally able to possess a firearm, federally.

Republican Assemblyman Robert Smullen has a few concerns regarding the proposed law. Smullen said in a release,

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle continued their infringement on our constitutional rights today. With the stroke of a pen they have turned my law-abiding friends and relatives into criminals. Downstate politicians who have police on every corner are not accustomed to what response times are like in Upstate New York. Taking a firearm out of a complicated storage process could be a matter of life or death. We already have laws on the books that require storage for firearms; this is outrageous and could cost lives.

An amendment to the legislation would also require gun sellers to inform the purchaser of their obligation to abide by this law. The legislation has been sent to Governor Andrew Cuomo to sign.