1/01/2012

NY lawmakers want to rewrite law for gun-packing tourists

This is a pretty amazing story where even the very liberal anti-gun Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver thinks that tourists who accidentally break New York's carry laws shouldn't have their lives destroyed. From the New York Post:

. . . The Tennessee tourist arrested for bringing her home-state-registered handgun to the 9/11 Memorial has picked up some powerful allies in the capital — who plan to reassess the state’s stringent gun-possession laws.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), the state’s second-most powerful Democrat, said yesterday that he will have “a committee hold a hearing on this question, to see how exactly the law is being enforced and to look at the possibility that there should be changes in the law.’’
The changes could include tweaking the law to allow leniency for people with guns registered in other states who mistakenly bring their weapons to New York. . . .
“Her actions show a clear indication that she didn’t know she was breaking the law, and when she saw the sign, she said, ‘OK, I do have a gun. Take it from me,’ ” said Silver, whose district includes Ground Zero. “There was no criminal intent.”
Silver noted that under the current law, the Manhattan DA and a judge can show her leniency only before she is indicted by a grand jury. After that, they are bound by minimum-sentence guidelines.
“The judge can show flexibility, and I think it should be done here,” Silver said.
State Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb (R-Canandaigua) also backed leniency for Graves, a married medical student who drove to New York with her husband to look for work as a nurse on Long Island.
“That is so ridiculous,” Kolb said. “She had a legitimate permit for the gun in Tennessee. I just think that’s the wrong message to send to a law-abiding citizen.” . . .


For other information see this here.

For a breakdown on the vote on the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 see this.

The Nashville Tennessean describes the events of Graves' arrest here.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Of course "leniency" in sentencing doesn't do that much good in the long run, since she'll still have a felony conviction on her record, making it next to impossible to get a lot of jobs, prohibiting her from voting in a lot of states, and prohibiting her from ever possessing so much as a .22 cartridge for the rest of her life. (It does, however, make a few politicians look good and convinces the public that the problem has been fixed.)

1/01/2012 6:23 PM  

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