County Deputy Sheriffs' Police Benevolent Association (SCDSPBA)

[jo...@rhosos.not]

A shame I've been around long enough to know what can and cannot be
done when it comes to the law and enforcement. If the state wants it,
we get it, shoved down our throats or up our ass, we have to digest
it. I am going to post this is all state newsgroups as well as those
with an emphasis on firearms as I repeat,
I will gladly give up my guns when the government is able to convince
me that all others have given up theirs. Start with the criminals and
then come to me. Do not take the other way around.

In closing, there are 5.3 to 5.8 American citizens we call Felons.
Somehow it doesn't seem right to me that we can take a man who was
arrested for stealing a neighbor's car and taking it for a joyride and
calling him a felon, one that 40 years into the future is prohibited
from
defending himself or his family and can no longer obtain a hunting
license to help provide meat for his family. Maybe we should take his
fishing rod from him as well? With the law declaring that nearly
every crime is a felon, they now believe they have those 5.3 - 5.8
million Felons willing to support gun control simply because they
cannot own a gun, no one else should either. Brilliant move, comrade
though I believe your logic is flawed and time will tell if it is.


Please read this

By this correspondence, the Saratoga County Deputy Sheriffs' Police
Benevolent Association (SCDSPBA) would like to announce our strong
opposition to the passage of the SAFE Act and the manner in which is
was negotiated and subsequently voted upon. The SCDSPBA represents the
sworn men and women police officers of the Saratoga County Sheriff's
Office.

Our objections to the legislation are numerous and begin with the
process under which the bill was voted on in the Senate. It is deeply
disturbing to our membership, as public servants and citizens of the
state of New York, the manner in which this legislation was brought to
the Senate for vote. It is our understanding that many senators had
approximately 20 minutes to read the legislation before being forced
to vote on it and note that the bill was brought before the Senate and
voted on so quickly that its authors failed to make provisions for the
exemption of police officers or the National Guard with respect to the
new magazine-capacity requirements.

Having reviewed the legislation and given the time constraints, it is
our conclusion that there is no possible way any normal person could
have read the entire bill and understood its implications prior to
voting on it. They most certainly could not have requested and
received the input of their constituency and considered their opinions
in the matter which is the most basic tenet of a representative
government. The entire process was one of secrecy and of intentional
withholding of information from the public. We condemn this in the
harshest terms. Had there been an opportunity for the public to
exercise their right to be involved in the legislative process prior
to the bill being voted upon, we would have offered a letter of
opposition. Instead, we find ourselves in the rather unique position
of opposing legislation after it has been passed. Our membership
believes we were denied one of the most basic rights of a democracy by
this process and we cannot and will not accept this type of behavior
from our elected officials.

In our opinion, there was absolutely no reason for the Governor to use
a message of necessity to bring this bill to vote. We note that the
Governor has used the message of necessity 35 times since taking
office and for nearly every major piece of legislation he has sought
to pass.

This particular bill has 56 sections; 53 take effect in 60 days, 2
take effect in 1 year and 1 section, which requires owners of certain
firearms to register them within 1 year, takes effect immediately. In
other words, given the language of the bill itself, there is no
emergency. As the message of necessity is to be used solely in the
case of a true emergency that warrants the waiver of the 3 day
maturing process for all legislation, the Governor's actions were
questionable at best and a deliberate attempt to bypass the
Constitutional process and thus opposition to the bill at worst. The
evidence strongly suggests the latter.

The Senate Leadership also had a responsibility to negotiate this
legislation publicly and to call the Governor out on his excessive use
of the message of necessity. Unfortunately, they chose not to do
either, thus depriving approximately 19.5 million citizens the
opportunity to offer meaningful comments and criticisms of the bill,
and to exercise their rights under our system of government. In short,
the Senate Leadership allowed the Governor to force legislation upon
the citizens of our state. Instead of offering a check-and-balance
against the Executive Branch, the Senate Leadership condoned and
authorized what may fairly be described as ruling by fiat. Whether one
is for or against the new legislation, all citizens should be truly
concerned by the manner in which our allegedly representative
government behaved and we condemn this in the harshest terms.

As a predominantly rural county in upstate New York, the lawful
ownership of firearms is and has been a valued tradition enjoyed by
many of our citizens. Sadly, the legislation effectively turns
countless law-abiding gun owners into criminals for absolutely no
reason. Many of our membership are gun-owners and have gone through
the same licensing process as non-police officers and it is our belief
that this process has served our citizens well. Mandating law-abiding
gun owners to now have to register certain types of firearms on a
yearly basis, in addition to registering them on their permits (which
now must be renewed every 5 years), accomplishes nothing in the area
of public safety and is unnecessarily burdensome to a citizen who has
done nothing but abide by the laws of our state.

The SCSDPBA reminds the addressees that assault weapons, which are
banned under the new legislation if they have 1 military-type feature,
were responsible for 5 out of 769 homicides in New York last year or
.007% - hardly a public safety crisis for our state. The Albany County
District Attorney's Office prosecuted 4 cases involving assault
weapons last year none of which involved their use in the commission
of a crime and a recent FBI report showed that hammers and clubs were
responsible for more deaths than rifles and shotguns. Given the
foregoing, our membership questions why there was a need to ban the
lawful use, possession, and sale of these firearms at all . Again,
many citizens of our county previously enjoyed the use of these rifles
for activities such as hunting and target shooting, and are now being
forced to register these firearms, on a yearly basis, when they have
done nothing wrong.

In addition, any semi-automatic pistol that has 1 military-type
feature will, under the new law, be considered an assault weapon.
While it may come as a surprise to the authors of the legislation,
most semi-automatic pistols do in fact come with a pistol grip, making
nearly every semi-automatic pistol an assault weapon and thus subject
to registration on a yearly basis. This registration is in addition to
registering the pistol on one's pistol license every 5 years. The
SCDSPBA believes this is absurd, serves no public safety interest in
the slightest, and crosses the proverbial line from reasonable
restrictions on gun ownership to outright harassment of law-abiding
gun owners.

As police officers who encounter criminal activity on a daily basis,
our membership finds the notion that a criminal might somehow wait in
line to turn in his or her high-capacity magazines or sell them to
someone out-of-state to be so ridiculous as to be not based in
reality. It is beyond shocking that a member of a body entrusted to
legislate the very laws that govern our society could, with a straight
face, argue this point. Our membership believes, as do most people of
sound mind, that the only persons who will abide by the new
high-capacity magazine ban are the law-abiding, leaving the same
high-capacity magazines in the hands of those who choose not to obey
the law.

Additionally, from an ethical and moral standpoint, we question why,
if high-capacity magazines are as destructive and deadly as the
legislature contends, they would be allowed to be sold to someone
out-of-state. Certainly, they would be as dangerous in New Jersey as
they would be in New York. Since 85 to 90% of guns used in crimes in
New York originate from out-of-state, it is nothing short of
incredible to us that the authors of this legislation could not have
foreseen the possibility of these magazines finding their way back
into New York. However this is the proposed solution offered by our
elected officials, for which we can find no discernible logic.

While there are some areas of the legislation that the union finds
encouraging, such as addressing glaring shortcomings in the mental
health system, by-and-large, our membership finds the legislation to
be little more than a thinly-veiled attempt at regulating lawful gun
ownership out of existence. From the manner in which the legislation
was negotiated in secret, to the fashion in which it was brought to
the Senate floor for vote, there was nothing about the process that
was transparent or that took into consideration what cannot be
disputed that law-abiding gun owners are not and have not been the
source of criminal activity. The legislation fails miserably to offer
any meaningful solutions to the epidemic of gun violence and places
the blame squarely where it does not belong on the shoulders of
law-abiding citizens. One need look no further than the embarrassment
of New York's Combined Ballistic Identification System that devoured
$44 million in taxpayer money over 11 years to regulate lawful
gun-ownership and which resulted in no convictions of anyone for
anything to illustrate the non-complicity of lawful gun-owners in
recent events.

In recent days, we have also become aware of published reports
describing a large and growing movement within our state of citizens
who have apparently announced their intention of non-compliance with
the new statutes as they relate to assault weapons and registration.
With an estimated 1 million assault rifles in existence throughout New
York, it is beyond comprehension that the legislature and the Governor
would needlessly place police officers in a position where they might
be called upon to confiscate the previously lawfully owned property of
an American citizen. There can be no denying the potential danger this
prospect places law enforcement in and once again strongly suggests a
bill that was rushed to passage without aforethought or any regard for
its potential implications. We cannot excuse this and do not
appreciate our very safety being sacrificed for political gain.
In conclusion, we would be remiss were we to not mention our outrage
at the conduct of the Senate Republican Coalition. Many of our
membership contacted Senator Skelos' office on a regular basis to
voice opposition to additional regulations of firearms and were
assured that the senator's office was being flooded with similar
calls.

We have, in the past, always looked to the Republican party to protect
the rights of law-abiding citizens much in the same way we place our
lives on the line every day to protect the rights of all citizens. To
have them negotiated away in secret and to be stripped of them in a
clandestine vote is both appalling and unforgivable. It will most
certainly give pause to many of our individual members when
considering their voting choices in the future and we condemn this in
the strongest possible way.

For the foregoing reasons, we cannot offer our support for this
legislation. We encourage members of the legislature to hold hearings
where the public is afforded the right to participate in the
legislative process, to address the issue of gun violence in a way
that might actually produce meaningful results, and to stop holding
law-abiding citizens who choose to exercise their rights under the
Second Amendment hostage for the criminal behavior of another, and the
political aspirations of the Governor.

Sincerely,Charles E. Fuller, President - SCDSPBA