The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, signed into law on Monday several measures to tighten the control of firearms and the main one increases from 18 to 21 years the age to buy an assault weapon, and it will also be required to have a license.
With this measure, New York, which already had the most restrictive laws in the country, joins the states of Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Vermont and Washington, which limit the age to buy some types of long weapons to 21 years, while Utah evaluate a similar proposal.
Among the new laws are the prohibition of high-capacity chargers, as well as the sale of bulletproof vests and body protection equipment to those who do not need them to work.
Similarly, the new laws make it a crime to make a threat of attack and require law enforcement to share and report seized weapons to state and federal databases. The state will also require social networks to monitor and report hateful behavior on their platforms.
Last Thursday, the legislature, with a Democratic majority, approved the package of measures, as Hochul had demanded, after the city of Buffalo was the scene of a shooting that left 10 dead and three wounded, eleven of them black, in which the perpetrator, Payton S. Gendron, an 18-year-old white man, used an assault rifle.
Gendron also wore a bulletproof vest and a protective helmet – like those that are now prohibited – on which he had a camera attached to which he broadcast his crime live.
After the incident, the Attorney General’s Office announced that it would investigate the websites used by the young man to execute and broadcast the attack. Gendron also left a manifesto in which he outlined his racist and white supremacist beliefs and detailed his plans for the attack.
Shortly after this assault, 19 children and two teachers died after another shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
“Thoughts and prayers will not fix this. But taking strong action will. And we will do it on behalf of the lives that have been lost,” said Hochul, who participated in the event in the Bronx county, where the past In April, a 16-year-old student leaving school was killed by a stray bullet, and in May, an eleven-year-old girl.
“Gun violence is a disease that is destroying our nation and is now the number one killer of children,” he said, and also recalled the shooting that occurred in an Oklahoma hospital last week with four dead, and this weekend in Philadelphia, where three people lost their lives and 11 were injured.
The new legislation also makes it a crime to sell firearms that cannot be micro-stamped, an innovative ammunition marking technique that identifies bullets and cartridges with a unique fingerprint each time a firearm is fired.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
