Gerrymandering by Tom Reynolds
No one can contest it (no sane person) when I state that the Democrat Party leadership wants to do away with our 2nd Amendment rights and to do that they will try anything, direct or indirect. We are about to see another indirect attempt that could be more dangerous than any of the proposed bills that directly threaten 2A.
New York Democrats’ gerrymandering frenzy was reignited after the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) struck down race-based redistricting. Basically, a state can’t gerrymander congressional districts based on race. Democrats are accusing Republicans of bringing back ‘Jim Crow Laws’ because Republicans are against racism. Do you understand that?
The Babylon Bee got it right: "In Blow To Democrats, SCOTUS Rules They Have To Stop Being Racist."
But NY Governor Kathy Hochul saw it differently; as usual, Trump was the devil behind all sin. She said the justices were “clearly carrying out Donald Trump’s will with this decision… I’m working with the Legislature to change New York’s redistricting process so we can fight back against Washington’s attempts to rig our democracy.”
Hochul’s not kidding. Remember, her misnamed ‘Concealed Carry Improvement Act’ was passed in reaction to another SCOTUS decision.
This will not be Hochul’s and her Democrat cohorts first turn at bat.
In March, the U S Supreme Court halted a lawsuit that aimed to eliminate New York City’s only GOP House and make it Democrat. That Democrat effort argued that the 11th Congressional District (Staten Island mostly) disenfranchised minority voters - even though the Republican holding that office is a Latina.
The NY State Constitution restricts partisan gerrymandering because, when Republicans controlled the NY Senate in 2014, a constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly approved by voters, after passing in the Legislature with bipartisan support. That amendment created an independent redistricting commission, to draw district lines once a decade, after the federal Census.
After taking control of both houses of the Legislature in 2019, Democrats put forward an amendment that would have gutted those NY Constitution’s anti-gerrymandering safeguards, that were approved in 2014. But their scheme was stopped by the voters! When the amendment went before the public in the 2021 general election, it lost and the 2014 protections against partisan gerrymandering remain in effect today. (In the 2021 election, the voters also rejected Democrat amendments that would have allowed for same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting.)
Last summer, Democrats started again. They introduced another constitutional amendment that would allow Albany to redraw New York’s Congressional Districts whenever another state conducts a mid-decade redistricting. A09014 and S08467 still need approval by two consecutively elected Legislatures, as well as the voters.
In heavily Democrat majority legislatures, passing them is the easy part. But getting the state’s voters to go along with such a partisan constitutional amendment might not be as easy; remember 2021.
If Democrats succeed in their gerrymandering and can regain control in D C, you can bet-the-farm that they will come against the 2nd Amendment with everything they have at their disposal.
A vote in time…saves 2A and the other nine. (Amendments in the Bill of Rights.)
Okay, I am not much of a poet but I can clearly see another threat to our rights on the horizon.
