Sheriffs’ Response to NY SAFE Act

Following passage of the SAFE Act by the State Legislature and approval by the Governor, the Sheriffs now have had the opportunity to review the language of the new law and wish to make our comments available. The Sheriffs of New York state support many of the provisions of the SAFE Act, and believe that they will enhance public safety and help to shield citizens from gun violence. However, there are also some parts of this new law that need clarification, and some that we think should be reconsidered and modified to meet the concerns of the law enforcement community and the public at large.

We have identified the following six provisions of the new law which we believe are helpful and will increase the safety of our citizens. These include:

•Assault weapon ban and definition of assault weapons. We believe that the new definition of assault weapons is too broad, and prevents the possession of many weapons that are legitimately used for hunting, target shooting and self defense. Classifying firearms as assault weapons because of one arbitrary feature effectively deprives people the right to possess firearms which have never before been designated as assault weapons. We are convinced that only law abiding gun owners will be affected by these new provisions, while criminals will still have and use whatever weapons they want....

• Reduction of ammunition magazine capacity. The new law enacts reductions in the maximum capacity of gun magazines. We believe based on our years of law enforcement experience that this will not reduce gun violence. The new law will unfairly limit the ability of law‐abiding citizens to purchase firearms in New York. It bears repeating that it is our belief that the reduction of magazine capacity will not make New Yorkers or our communities safer.


•Five-year recertification of pistol permit status and registration of existing assault weapons. The new law delegates to the State Police the duty to solicit and receive updated personal information of permit holders every five years in order to maintain these permits. Further, the law requires owners of certain existing firearms now classified as assault weapons to register these with the State Police within one year. The recertification and registration conflict with Sheriffs’ duties regarding issuance of pistol permits. All records should be maintained at the local, and not the state level. This information should be accessible to those who are responsible for initial investigation of permit applications. Pistol permit information should be maintained in one file at the local level, and forwarded to a statewide database for law enforcement use. It bears repeating that it is our belief that pistol permit and any registration information required by the law should be confidential and protected from FOIL disclosure.

Guns fly off the shelves
Worry about new controls spurs sales in New England

By Callum Borchers and Todd Wallack
Globe Staff / January 29, 2013

Gun manufacturers and retailers throughout New England are struggling to keep up with surging demand as buyers, worried their options may soon be limited, snap up firearms and ammunition.

Shops say they have sold out of many popular gun models, including variations of the AR-15-style rifle used in last month’s mass shootings in Newtown, Conn. Some retailers have resorted to capping the number of bullets customers can buy in an effort to preserve dwindling inventories, or taken to marking up prices.

The sharp increase in sales is fueled by the looming prospect of greater controls on firearms. Proposals to further restrict or regulate ownership are pending nationally and in Massachusetts.

The surge in purchases can be gauged by the wave of background checks required for prospective gun buyers. Nine of the 10 busiest days for background checks ever recorded by the FBI were in the past two months. In December alone, the agency performed 25,251 checks for would-be buyers in Massachusetts — an increase of 73 percent from a year earlier...

Mass. keeps mental health data from FBI gun checks
State law prevents sharing of records on mental health
By David Uberti | Globe Correspondent

January 28, 2013

WASHINGTON — Despite its reputation as a state with strong gun-control laws, Massachusetts for more than a decade has not provided mental health records to an FBI database for gun background checks, the result of a 43-year-old state law prohibiting such sharing.

Massachusetts has submitted just one mental health record to the federal database since 1999 — apparently as a test — at the same time that the FBI has processed 1.6 million background checks of Bay State residents who seek to buy guns from federally licensed dealers. The situation has sparked concerns that firearms could fall into the hands of the mentally ill.

Governor Deval Patrick has twice tried unsuccessfully to get legislative approval for the sharing of mental health data. Both attempts failed to gain traction in the state Legislature amid opposition from gun-rights activists.

The governor renewed the effort earlier this month when he proposed universal background checks that include mental health information. Supporters said that momentum for revising the measure may have reached a tipping point in the wake of the shooting of 26 people in Newtown, Conn.

Brady Campaign Urges Starbucks To Prohibit Guns In Its Retail Outlets

Feb 5, 2010

Washington, DC – Radical gun enthusiasts have begun parading into California restaurants and coffeehouses in recent weeks brazenly displaying handguns. The gun activists have frightened customers, alarmed police and caused at least two restaurant chains to establish firm policies prohibiting firearms in their retail locations.

Ten days ago, gun violence opponents in California started urging a third chain, Starbucks, to similarly prohibit the "open carry" of firearms in its retail establishments, but Starbucks has rebuffed their requests. Today, the national Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence joins with its chapter leaders in California and across the nation in urging the Starbucks Coffee Company to bar the carrying of firearms in its shops.

Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, today sent a letter to Howard Schultz, the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Starbucks Coffee Company, asking him to change their policy. "I am writing to urge you to reverse Starbucks’ current policy allowing persons to carry guns, both openly and concealed, into your stores," Helmke wrote. "On behalf of the Brady Campaign and its chapters across the country, I ask you to consider the rights of the vast majority of your customers to bring their families, including their children, into your stores without being confronted with the threatening presence of open-displayed guns."...

Starbucks posts significant increases in earnings and sales in second quarter
by Austin Lewis
April 22, 2010

Coffee retailer Starbucks Corp., based in Seattle, Wash., reported significantly higher earnings based on improved domestic and international sales. Starbucks surpassed Wall Street’s estimates by four cents. The stock rose slightly Wednesday.

Starbucks earned $217.3 million, or 28 cents earnings per diluted share, in the second quarter ended March 28, up nearly eightfold from $25 million, or 3 cents per diluted share, in the same period last year. Earnings reflected a $5.8 million charge related to restructuring....

Press Release About Starbucks Boycott
Posted Jan 30 2012 by ngac with 0 Comments
Starbucks’ “Pro-Gun” Policy Prompts Gun Victims’ Advocate Group to Launch Nationwide Boycott on Valentine’s Day 2012

CHICAGO, Jan. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – A nationwide boycott of Starbucks stores and its products will be launched on Valentine’s Day 2012. Its goal is to eliminate the risk of guns in public places and ultimately to bring sane gun laws to the U.S.

This boycott is being called by the National Gun Victim’s Action Council (NGAC), a network of 14 million gun victims, the faith community including the: Episcopal Peace Fellowship, United Church of Christ, Fellowship of Reconciliation (46 peace fellowships and 43 affiliate fellowships), secular groups working to reduce gun violence and many of the organizations that support passing sane gun laws...

...Starbucks has the legal right to ban guns but despite having been petitioned by thousands, asked at a shareholder meeting, and a direct appeal made to their Board, Starbucks clings to this policy that puts millions of Americans at risk every day and encourages the spread of guns being carried in public.

IMPACT OF STARBUCKS BOYCOTT: Fineman says, “Starbucks steadfast support of the NRA’s lethal pro-gun agenda damages its ‘socially conscious company’ brand. Further,” adds Fineman, “Monte Carlo Simulation risk analysis indicates that 90% of the time, our boycott will reduce Starbucks stock price by an amount no rational company would allow.”...

Starbucks posts 13% higher profit
Market Pulse
January 24, 2013|Jim Jelter

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Starbucks Corp. (US:sbux) reported late Thursday its fiscal first-quarter profit rose to $432 million, or 57 cents a share, from $382 million, or 50 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 30 rose 11% to $3.8 billion from $3.44 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected the Seattle-based coffee giant to earn 57 cents a share on $3.85 billion in revenue. Starbucks stood by its fiscal 2013 revenue growth target of 10% to 13%. Starbucks shares fell 1.1% to $54.00 in after-hours trade.

...Ron Forsyth believes the gunman is the only person to blame in Steve Forsyth's death – that no law could have kept him safe.

"I believe all the rhetoric in Washington is just that, rhetoric," he said. "You can't really enforce legislation on rate of fire or size of clips or kind of ammunition because if you do, then the good guys won't be able to get it and the bad guys will have it."

He believes his son's legacy isn't about guns, but about all the people one man can touch during his lifetime.

"His celebration of life drew 2,500 people and they were all there for him," Ron Forsyth said.

TIM TYSON: I think for some reason we are unwilling to honor people who are politically active. We want to honor people who just have had enough and sort of spontaneously won't take it any more. But somehow if they get categorized as active citizens, which would be a positive way of saying it, as troublemakers – which is the way we often [CHUCKLES] think about such persons – then somehow it becomes self-serving, part of a movement which we're less comfortable with. And I think that's just an American popular cultural narrative that we pick up very quickly. And indeed, it started very quickly after the bus boycott. And they talked about her tired feet. That gets mentioned a lot more often than it should. She may have been a little bit tired, but that had nothing to do with the decision that she made. BOB GARFIELD: In that same Washington Post obituary there was, it seemed, a palpable sense of disappointment that the myth is, in fact, a myth. Why are we so reluctant to let it go? TIM TYSON: There's a sense in which Mrs. Parks is very important to our post-civil rights racial narrative, because we really want a kind of sugar-coated civil rights movement that's about purity and interracial non-violence. And so we don't really want to meet the real Rosa Parks. We don't, for example, want to know that in the late 1960s, Rosa Parks became a black nationalist and a great admirer of Malcolm X. I met Rosa Parks at the funeral of Robert F. Williams, who had fought the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina with a machine gun in the late 1950s and then fled to Cuba, and had been a kind of international revolutionary icon of black power. Ms. Parks delivered the eulogy at his funeral. She talks in her autobiography and says that she never believed in non-violence and that she was incapable of that herself, and that she kept guns in her home to protect her family. But we want a little old lady with tired feet. You may have noticed we don't have a lot of pacifist white heroes. We prefer our black people meek and mild, I think.