NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S DEFIANCE OF THE SCOTUS BRUEN DECISION OPENS A NEW FRONT IN WAR AGAINST SECOND AMENDMENT

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

MULTI SERIES

PART TWENTY-ONE

The U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment case law decisions in Heller, McDonald and Bruen are on the line, and the American public can thank or blame New York Governor Kathy Hochul, along with the Anti-Second Amendment Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany, for this.

As long as able, principled Justices sit on the High Court, they will do everything in their power to preserve and strengthen the Second Amendment and preserve the integrity of their rulings. The late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia was one such Justice. And Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two others. Hopefully, Donald Trump’s nominees will demonstrate they are cut from the same cloth. 

These Justices do not have an easy or enviable job, given the power of the forces aligned against them, and against this Country, its people, and the Nation’s Constitution.

The right of armed self-defense is a natural law right and Government cannot lawfully modify it, ignore it, or extinguish the American people’s exercise of it. For the Nation belongs to them, not to the Government. Government at all levels exists only to serve the interests of the people.

Government exists only through the consent of the governed. Through time the would-be Assassins of our Country have sought to shove that Truth aside. The armed citizenry exists to push that Truth to the fore.

The right to armed self-defense should never have been an issue in the United States. But it is. And it is more insistent now than ever. The Assassins of our free Constitutional Republic continue consolidating their power over the Federal Government, over the States, and over the people, blatantly disregarding law and Constitution, usurping the sovereignty of the States and the citizenry.

These treacherous actions include:

• Thrusting the world’s flotsam and jetsam on us, in uninhibited and abject defiance of our Country’s comprehensive immigration and naturalization laws;
• Deliberately destroying the Nation’s economy, weakening our military, demoralizing the people, shutting down access to our natural resources;
• Allowing the infiltration and the infestation of murderous international criminal cartels in our Cities, to destabilize our society further, threatening and endangering the welfare and well-being of our people;
• Permitting CCP China to insinuate itself into our Nation and into our institutions, so they may engage in espionage and sabotage operations unimpeded;
• Wasting our Nation’s tax dollars on worthless or harmful domestic projects, and on foreign intrigues that do not benefit our people and that have nothing to do with maintaining and strengthening National Security;
• Denying to the States and to the people the means to protect themselves, their families, and their Nation from an elaborate campaign instituted by a treacherous Federal Government, treacherous Press, and by their secretive ruthless, treacherous benefactors to drive the Nation to ruination and dissolution, as they all aim to impose lasting Tyranny on our Country.

Concerning this last bullet point, both the Federal Government and their fellow conspirators in control of many State Governments across the Country, have instituted illegal, unconstitutional measures and are continually devising novel new measures to deny to the sovereign American citizenry the exercise of its Natural Law Rights.

These failsafe mechanisms are the last and most effective means to prevent the disassembling of the Nation, and the reduction of the citizenry to everlasting oppression, subjugation, and penury. This is happening here and in Western Nations across the world.

 The EU nation-states—what is left of them—and the Commonwealth Nations, especially the major ones, namely, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, have descended into Tyranny.

But, the descent of the American people into Tyranny is more difficult to accomplish because Americans are well-armed. The puppet masters, controlling the messaging and actions of the rogue, treacherous Federal Government, has utilized other means to gain control over the American people.

The rogue Federal Government has with full knowledge deliberately placed illegal obstacles in the path of Americans’ exercise of their natural law rights and of their ability to secure relief from Federal Government excesses.

This rogue Federal Government has captured speech and the right to dissent. It has placed constraints on the freedom of association and the filing of grievances. It has de facto abrogated or ignored statutes and has quietly suspended the filing of writs of habeas corpus.

This rogue Government has also quietly suspended the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, gaining complete control over all electronic information. And it has commandeered the machinery of the electoral process despite its vociferous denial and that of its lackey, the Press.

This treacherous Federal Government has effectively corralled broad swaths of the American polity and has effectively brain-washed and softened up the psyche of that portion of the polity.

This means that much of the public is psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually unwell and incapable of resisting the Government’s treachery.

Thus, a significant portion of the population does not pose a tenable threat to the Federal Government’s purloining of their Nation.

Yet there remains much of the Nation that is not susceptible to this nationwide campaign of psychological conditioning. And they are well-armed.

Guns and ammunition in the hands of millions—nay tens of millions of commonality—is of the utmost concern to these forces that crush entire nations and people.

What has occurred in New York serves as an insightful microcosm of the Nation’s Assassins’ eradication of public resistance to the inception of Totalitarianism, ergo, Tyranny.

The Nation’s Assassins gave New York Governor Kathy Hochul the “Green Light” to continue to constrict the life out of the Second Amendment in New York. And she has done just that, and she did so with complete abandon, confident that she will face neither legal nor political repercussions for her treacherous acts.

More so than even the Biden Administration—Kathy Hochul, the public face of Tyranny in New York—has openly challenged the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The question of the fundamental, unalienable, right to armed self-defense is again front and center before the U.S. Supreme Court, and so soon after the publication of the Bruen decision.

Instead of complying with the Bruen rulings, Hochul and Albany and the shadowy network of overseers directing their actions behind the scenes, threw a rattlesnake at New York concealed handgun carry licensees.

The CCIA that Hochul signed into law works against those persons desirous of obtaining a concealed handgun carry license for the first time and against those who currently hold valid New York handgun carry licenses. Many New York handgun licensees in this latter group have held such licenses for years. Now they must comply with another and vastly more heinous set of obstacles if they wish to renew their licenses. And the most serious obstacle facing those people seeking new handgun concealed handgun carry licenses or renewal licenses is that they must waive their right to be free from the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.

This waiver of one’s Fourth Amendment natural law right is now embodied in the reconfigured and significantly strengthened good moral character requirement of the CCIA, presently challenged in the New York Antonyuk case (Antonyuk II), along with other challenges.

Hochul and Albany have not only acted in defiance of the Bruen rulings through the enactment of the CCIA but have consciously and contemptuously baited the U.S. Supreme Court, daring the High Court to take any action to stop them. 

This, unfortunately, is nothing new.

New York has continued its merry way, constricting the life out of concealed handgun carry in New York.

This commenced with the enactment of the notorious Sullivan Act in 1911, which created the concealed handgun carry licensing regime. Albany enacted the Sullivan Act at the behest of the corrupt New York “Tammany Hall” Government.

Through the passing years and decades, the New York Government has placed increasingly more arduous procedures and restrictions on those New Yorkers who sought to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. This has now culminated in the noxious, unconstitutional Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA).

Hochul alluded to what was coming, pushing for the CCIA, the very day the U.S. Supreme Court came out with its decision in Bruen, on June 23, 2022. She made clear to New York residents, and no less to the High Court, that New York will go its own way, not obliged to comply with the Bruen rulings. Hochul hammered this idea home on her website, the day she signed the CCIA into Law, July 1, 2022.

That she would defy the High Court, is transparent in the title of the message: “Governor Hochul Signs Landmark Legislation to Strengthen Gun Laws and Bolster Restrictions On Concealed Carry Weapons In Response To Reckless Supreme Court Decision.” See also her remarks of August 31, 2022. And see the article in the Washington Examiner, June 30, 2022, where Hochul caustically and perfunctorily asserts that she doesn’t need proof that gun control keeps anyone safe. 

See CBS Affiliate 6News reporter Anne McCloy’s interview with Kathy Hochul, on June 29, 2022:

“Anne: ‘Do you have the numbers to show that it’s the concealed carry permit holders that are committing crimes? Because the lawful gun owner will say that you’re attacking the wrong person, that it’s really the people getting the guns illegally that are causing the violence not the people going and getting the permit legally. Do you have the numbers?’

Hochul: ‘I don’t need to have numbers. I don’t need to have a data point to say this. I know that I have a responsibility of this state to have sensible gun safety laws and this one was not devised by the Hochul administration, it comes out of an administration from 1908 in our state, so that’s what the Supreme Court has attacked. I don’t need a data point to say I have a responsibility to protect the people of this state.’” 

And Hochul contemptuously, but also idiotically remarks, as reported by Fox News, on June 23, 2022, “that she is ‘prepared to go back to muskets through gun restrictions.’” 

That remark led former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller to quip, as reported by Fox News, in another news story, also on June 23, 2022:

“‘Will the criminals rampaging freely across New York be going back to muskets as well?’ He [Stephen Miller] then posed another question to Hochul’s point, ‘Also, out of curiosity, what medium is Hochul using to broadcast this message and did it exist in the 18th century?’” 

Likely, Hochul is unfamiliar with the Heller case. The late eminent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia directly addressed her remark, and he, unlike Hochul, wasn’t flippant about this.

“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment.  We do not interpret constitutional rights that way.  Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 849, 117 S. Ct. 2329, 138 L. Ed. 2d 874 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35-36, 121 S. Ct. 2038, 150 L. Ed. 2d 94 (2001), the Second Amendment extends,  prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were  not in existence at the time of the founding.” 

Although Hochul’s caustic dismissal of the Second Amendment might not come as a surprise to anyone now, we would be remiss if we fail to point out that Hochul didn’t, apparently, always think this way, as she heretofore evinced a completely different viewpoint, when making her bid for a four-year term in the Government’s mansion, as reported by the Washington Examiner, on May 31, 2022: 

“Hochul, who replaced Andrew Cuomo in the governor’s mansion last August after nearly eight years as the lieutenant governor, has made a dramatic shift to the left on gun control since 2012, the year she earned an endorsement from the NRA during her failed bid to represent New York’s right-leaning 27th District in the House.

The ad plays a clip of Hochul, then a first-term member of Congress with an “A” rating from the NRA, touting the endorsement. . . .

When asked about her congressional voting record on gun rights, Hochul dismissed the criticisms of her opponent.

‘This is not the time to talk about that,’ the governor said in a May 18 press briefing. ‘I will tell you what I’m doing right now as governor of the state of New York. ’” 

What this means, of course, is that Hochul is cut from the same cloth of many another hypocritical and contemptible politician.

She, like they, isn’t averse to taking a contrary stance on an issue to suit her present coterie of benefactors. In this instance, we are referring to the extraordinarily wealthy and powerful Neoliberal Globalists, who abhor the Second Amendment, and whose deep-seated social and political philosophical bent, attuned to those of their fellows in Brussels, is far removed from those of the founders of our Republic. and in this instance, we are referring to extraordinarily wealthy and powerful Neoliberal Globalists all, who abhor the Second Amendment, whose deep-seated social and political philosophical bent is far removed from those of the founders of our Republic and attuned to those of their fellows in Brussels. Hochul made a deal with them and part of that compact requires her to take a definitive stance against the exercise of the citizen’s natural law right to armed self-defense. What she professes to believe and ostensibly fervently convey to the public is ever subject to change as a political opportunity arises or as a political exigency demands. To enhance her chances exponentially of securing the exalted station of Governor of New York she has learned that one must be vehemently opposed to both firearms and to one’s exercise of the natural law right to keep and bear them. And, like all successful politicians, this one too, must be the consummate actor, consistent with all politician-actors and consistent with the history of Gun Law reality in New York. And, so, Hochul can, and has, gladly traded in her NRA “A” rating for an NRA “F.” And few would be the wiser to recall that a  grand switcheroo had occurred. Hochul the Hypocrite has successfully secured for herself the Governor’s mansion in New York, and that is all that matters. And all it took was the sale of a few trifles: her honor and her integrity and her principles. Oh yes, and the loss of her immortal Soul—that too!

Whatever else a politician might do holding high political office in New York—say a Governor of the State or Mayor of New York City—he or she must work fervently to further restrict civilian possession of firearms in New York. Cuomo did that to a “T.” The “Powers That Be” removed him only because they felt he had become more of a liability to their agenda and less of an asset. Hochul, as the new Governor, must one-up Cuomo on the matter of guns and gun ownership and possession in New York, and that isn’t an easy task, especially in view of the Bruen decision that came down on her watch.

But Hochul has shown she is clearly up to the task. She has demonstrated to her benefactors that she doesn’t give a damn what the U.S. Supreme Court does nor what the Second Amendment says. And that is a necessary stance. It behooves all of New York’s present and future politicians to be ever mindful of this if they wish to maintain or secure the “brass ring.”

Neither the Articles of the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights mean anything to those who have bought and paid for Hochul’s allegiance to them and to the greater glory of the Neo-Feudalistic World Empire they espouse and have been working tirelessly for and now gleefully see coming rapidly to fruition.

Worried they were when the heretic Donald Trump threw a wrench in their grand scheme. But they are making him pay dearly for his hybris, just as they are making all his devotees pay for following the “false prophet.” But, how this all ultimately plays out is a Chapter in American History and in World History yet to be written.

But for New York officials and would-be New York officials, one truism, of the State’s political philosophy remains constant—a political philosophy that is also a code of conduct—and it behooves all New York politicians to be ever mindful of this if they wish to secure or to maintain the “brass ring.”

It is this: Through the passing years and decades, amendments to New York’s Gun laws have always been among the most restrictive in the Nation, and each succeeding New York politician must do his or her part to make those laws ever more restrictive, convoluted, emphatic, and elaborate—always keeping one step ahead of unconstitutional, unconscionable Federal legislation until the Second Amendment is no more.

This Federal legislation includes the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, and, most recently, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022. 

Democrat Party Presidents and their administrations engineered and pushed for these: Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton, and Biden.

Anti-Second Amendment proponents, through the propaganda engine of the Press, stressed a need to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. That was the consistent narrative played to the public, one that has, through the passing decades, seeped deeply into the minds of half the Country—so effective has this illegal brainwashing program been.

And, through the passage of time, the messaging has become more and more sophisticated, aided significantly by——

• The inception of the internet,
• The growth of social media,
• Federal Government laws or policies permitting the propagation of propaganda directed to the American people in violation of the Federal Smith-Mundt Act, and
• Rapid advances in the fields of mind control and social engineering—psyops on an industrial scale.

The Hochul Government has utilized several of these and has prevailed on those members of the New York public—those peculiarly susceptible to emotional messaging—to support the Government in its efforts to dismantle the operation of the Second Amendment guarantee in New York. Hochul’s proffering of a sop to the people of New York

Today, the running Press narrative aligns with the goal of the de facto elimination of an armed American citizenry. “Gun Violence” is the new false meme inserted like a psychological virus in the mind of the public. It is a ruse. One that Hochul dutifully utilizes. It serves as a useful smokescreen, perpetrated by agents of those planning for the de facto, and, eventually, de jure end of an independent, sovereign Nation-State, the end of a free Republic, and an end to a free and sovereign citizenry.

Those forces controlling Kathy Hochul of New York were instrumental in getting her elected and instrumental in getting similar, spiritually and emotionally weak, and unprincipled, corruptible politicians elected to high State Office around the Country.

These same forces, who machinated to topple Trump and to sit the Great Pretender Biden in the White House, feel they can defy the last venerable institution of the Federal Government, the U.S. Supreme Court. But can they?

Kathy Hochul’s silent, secretive benefactors have evidently told New York Kathy Hochul that the High Court won’t present a problem for her and that she can blatantly scold the Court as if it were a wayward child, without worrying about repercussions for her aberrant, irreverent behavior. She apparently believes them and has acted accordingly. More fearful is she of angering her benefactors than of betraying those New York residents who are citizens of the United States, and of betraying the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  

In signing into law, major amendments to the State’s gun law, packaged under the curiously named Concealed Carry Improvement Act (“CCIA”) (“improvement” for whom?), both Hochul and Albany, and those behind the scenes who control them, feel confident the U.S. Supreme Court is unable or unwilling to prevent the enforcement of the CCIA and the immolation of the Second Amendment in New York.

This idea is grounded on the false belief that the Nation’s Obstructors and Destructors that have, through time, gained solid control over the Executive Branch of Government and that wield substantial influence over Congress, i.e., the Legislative Branch of the Federal Government, also wield considerable control over the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third Branch of Government. But as for the notion of control over the Third Branch of Government, the Hochul Government, and its benefactors, are wrong.

Kathy Hochul has, through the implementation of the CCIA and in her avid push to enforce it, opened the possibility of a fourth major Second Amendment case coming down the pike—much sooner than expected, and definitely much sooner than she and Albany and their cronies and the wealthy, secretive, ruthless benefactors would want.

This is evident from the Hochul Government’s Brief in Opposition to the Concealed Handgun Carry Licensees Emergency Application for Relief from the Second Circuit’s Stay of the Handgun Licensees Preliminary Injunction filed on January 3, 2022. We will delve deeper into this in the next several segments of this multi-series article.

Hochul’s insolence directed at our Constitution and our most venerable institution, the U.S. Supreme Court, should not be so easily dismissed. It is nothing short of a blatant desecration, damaging to our most cherished precepts and values.

The pity of it is that speaking ill of our Country and of our cherished values and tenets and precepts has become commonplace. The effects are discernible.

The rot enveloping our Country is so pervasive that surgical removal of the afflicted organs may so weaken the Republic that it will die anyway. But an honorable death may be preferable to swaddling a “living corpse” in a rancid lie.  

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Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.