Opinion: Guns didn’t change, our society’s attitudes changed

Second Amendment rights are not a state law, congressional act or executive order, but a part of the U.S. Constitution. Unlike Obamacare, defense spending and the Safe Act, the 2nd Amendment (and the rights it protects) can only be repealed through another Constitutional Amendment. Cuomo knows repeal is impossible, so he chips away at it using every means available and a tragedy provides them with a stage. It should not go unnoticed that Cuomo and his like are not rabid supporters of the entire Bill Of Rights.

Decision makers know that bad decisions are usually made in moments of high emotion. And yet, the chief decision maker in New York uses every tragedy – that fits his agenda – to get emotional support for his unconstitutional agenda.

Cuomo emotionally asks, “How many more children must die before this nation acts?” The answer is not disarming innocent bystanders. Would you destroy your car because a neighbor causes a fatal auto accident? We need to be protected from the guilty and cure the root causes of their actions with more than Cuomo’s ineffective political posturing.  

Cuomo says that arming teachers and school guards is, “ludicrous and unrealistic”. But he is surrounded by a group of armed State Troopers wherever he goes. Which is more valuable to us – Cuomo or our children?  

Cuomo should cut the hypocrisy and disarm his protective detail if he really believes that fewer guns provide more safety?    

Cuomo says, “The Safe Act, “…didn’t affect sportsmen, hunters or legal gun owners.” Do you like having the protection of the 4th Amendment (no unreasonable search and seizure), 5th Amendment (due process of law), and the 6th Amendment (trial by jury)?  

Sorry, if you are a gun owner in New York State, the Safe Act is used to deny you those rights. We probably all agree that guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally ill, but under the Safe Act anyone accused of mental problems is denied those rights guaranteed under the Constitution.          

Cuomo says, “The SAFE Act banned assault weapons like AR-15s. The definition of the dreaded assault weapon depends as much on how dangerous it looks as on how it functions. A Ruger Mini14 has the same capabilities as an AR15 but is not labeled an assault weapon and also banned because the Mini14 doesn’t look dangerous. Which is more likely to prevent you from being attacked and, therefore, never having to actually shoot it, a weapon that looks dangerous or one that does not?  

Having grown up in Owego and attending OFA, I remember a school parking lot with pickup trucks having a gun rack in the back window and the first day of hunting season as almost a national holiday in terms of attendance; not exactly a gun free zone and no issue with shootings, even accidental shootings. Guns didn’t change but, instead, our society’s attitudes changed.  

Too often our new society reflects the hypocrisy and principles of Cuomo and his cohorts: no personal responsibility; disdain for the constitutional principles that made America great and the moral and ethical values we learned in church.  

The answer is not more gun laws, we already have hundreds on the books, but a change in the values espoused by government elites and the media, which would bring us down to the level of the former Soviet Union and Communist China. Both of these, by the way, incurred tens of millions of government-generated deaths after guns were confiscated.

Cuomo and his cohorts are not about safety protection but about control.

SCOPE is a 50-plus year old statewide organization whose mission is political education in defense of the Constitution, and in particular in defense of the 2nd Amendment. It has almost 5,000 members and includes a Tioga County chapter.  

Tom Reynolds

Former President of SCOPE 

1963 graduate of Owego Free Academy

Horseheads, N.Y.