The following link will provide a video that summarizes the reaction by Governor Hochul and her political party to the Supreme Court decision last June which modified NY’s concealed carry laws in our favor.

You may recall Hochul’s fervorous reaction was to call a special session of the state legislature followed by its passage of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) which gutted our concealed carry rights in NY. 

There have been a series of court decisions declaring the unconstitutionality of most parts of the act. Each has earned an appeal by our state government (utilizing our tax dollars).

berties. This link will provide you with a credible and tenable summary of the actions taken by all involved. Rest assured that the 2A organizations statewide and nationwide are working diligently to protect your God-given liberties. These include SCOPE; GOA; GOA-NY; NRA; NYSRPA. Feel free to share this link:

                            https://youtu.be/gPcgEK7Jjq0

Once again, we have a shooter who had a history with law enforcement yet was never prosecuted. It’s on record that he threatened his family last year with a homemade bomb and a gun. What consequences did he suffer? None, despite federal kidnapping and menacing charges possibly resulting in prosecution and preventing his possession of a firearm. Yet no gun law would have prevented him from obtaining a gun illegally. Criminals, by nature, do not obey laws, period.

Colorado is one of 19 states and the District of Columbia with a “Red Flag” law. These are of little value when potential federal charges are ignored. The government again failed to do its job. Yet we are expected to relinquish our God-given right under the Second Amendment and put our faith in our government to keep us safe. 

The problem with “red flag” laws is they can be misused by anyone with a grudge. Where is the evidence sufficient to warrant an arrest or seizure of firearms? These laws are profoundly unconstitutional since they are based upon the concept that the state or a court can predict who may commit a crime. 

Our Constitution guarantees us due process and I’m referring to “front-end” due process applied prior to gun confiscation.  A hearing does not guarantee our constitutional rights nor does the expenditure of thousands of dollars for an attorney. Realize that waiting months for the return of one’s firearms can place one in jeopardy. 

President Biden again called for an “assault weapons ban”. This is no solution. Should we expect a ban on hammers following the Paul Pelosi incident? Certainly the presence of police did not prevent him from being assaulted. Let’s face the facts. We have over 20 million so-called “assault weapons”or AR-15s in this country. Do we really believe that a ban would truly stop a criminal from obtaining one? 

No government could prevent the nightclub shooting. The shooter was stopped by patrons inside the club.  These patrons fought against insurmountable odds. This is why the Second Amendment exists. It provides us the power to fight against any person or government attempting to terrorize us. 

The truth is the anti-gun lobby uses fear from such shootings in an attempt to control law-abiding citizens. Their real agenda is to strip away our Second Amendment rights. Their goal is to control us, not save us. 

Dr. John Lott has a new piece on some of our research at Real Clear Politics.  
With crime such an important issue, Americans depend on the FBI for accurate data. The crime data for 2021 is a mess, with almost 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country not submitting any data to the FBI. In California, 93% didn’t report crime data. In New York, 87% didn’t. Cities are embarrassed by the soaring crime rates, and even when they have collected the data they aren’t transmitting those numbers to the FBI.

But many more data errors are the direct responsibility of the FBI. Up until January of last year, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I found that they were missing lots of cases and had misidentified others. Unfortunately, the FBI was unwilling to fix any of these errors. Since leaving that job, I have found many more missed cases, updating the list this month.

Nor was that the first time I pointed out such errors to the FBI, and I published a list of them in a criminology publication in 2015.

These news reports relied on a series of FBI reports on active shootings put together by researchers at Texas State University.

The FBI reports that armed citizens stopped only 11 of the 252 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2021. The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn’t hit. 

To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don’t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents. 

My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, also undertook a search for news stories. The CPRC discovered a total of 360 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2021, and it found that an armed citizen stopped 124 of these. I also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard. We found these cases on a tiny budget of just a few thousand dollars. Though we found that armed citizens had stopped 11 times more cases than the FBI reports, I make no claim that we have identified all of them. It is quite possible that the news media itself never covers many such incidents.

But no one needs to take my word for it that the FBI missed many cases. All of the news stories that my team collected are listed on the CPRC website.

While the FBI claims that just 4.4% of active shootings were stopped by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, the percentage that I found was 34%. I am more confident that we have identified a higher percentage of recent cases, and the percentage in 2021 was even higher – 49%. 

The FBI doesn’t differentiate between law-abiding citizens stopping attacks where guns are banned and where they are allowed, but you can’t really expect law-abiding citizens to stop attacks where it is illegal to carry guns. In places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry firearms, the percentage of active shootings stopped is above 50% for the whole period. And, again, we are more confident that we have more of the cases in recent years. The figure hits 58% in 2021.

In order to follow the FBI’s definition, I also had to exclude 24 cases because a law-abiding person with a gun stopped the attacker before he was able to get off a shot.

But there is a more basic problem in the reliance on news coverage to determine whether an active shooting was stopped by an armed civilian. The news media has a clear bias to cover cases where bad things happen over cases where bad things are prevented. The old adage is: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Killings are usually more newsworthy than woundings, and woundings more notable than confrontations defused simply by someone brandishing a gun.

As an example, I examined news stories of defensive gun use data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 10 of this year, and found 774 defensive gun uses, fully 85% involving people shot: 43% resulting in death and 42% in wounding. Less than 4% of cases involved no shots fired. But survey data indicate that in 95% of cases when people use guns defensively, they merely show the gun to make the criminal back off. Such defensive gun uses rarely make the news.

The problem is that the FBI numbers are used by academics who do research and by the media. To see how the FBI reports alter news coverage, see the July 17 Greenwood Mall shooting near Indianapolis, where a young man, Elisjsha Dicken, used his legally carried gun to stop what clearly would have been a horrible mass public shooting. The news coverage immediately relied on the FBI and Texas State University reports to tell people Dicken’s heroism was very unusual.

“Making Dicken’s heroism perhaps even more remarkable is the fact cases of an armed bystander attacking an active shooter are rare,” CNN noted two days after the attack. “The Greenwood incident is unique, however, because it became one of the rare instances of an armed civilian successfully intervening to end a mass shooting,” claimed the Washington Post the day after the attack. But what is really rare is the news coverage of these attacks. Few know that there were at least six other similar likely mass public shootings that armed civilians stopped in the first nine months of this year.

It is hard to ignore how all of this feeds into the gun control debate. Nor can one forget about the charges of political bias leveled by whistleblowers in the FBI.

The FBI is systematically missing defensive gun uses. And it has failed to fix these errors, even when I have pointed them out. Considering how often the media cites the FBI as an authoritative source, this institution needs to do better.

A federal court judge in Buffalo, N.Y. has granted a temporary restraining order in a case filed by the Second Amendment Foundation that challenges New York State’s new concealed carry law, declaring the state’s “place of worship” restriction is unconstitutional.

“Ample Supreme Court precedent addressing the individual’s right to keep and bear arms—from Heller and McDonald to its June 22 decision in Bruen—dictates that New York’s place of worship restriction is equally unconstitutional,” wrote District Judge John L. Sinatra, Jr.

The order is effective immediately and prohibits enforcement of this provision.

“We’re delighted with the quick action by Judge Sinatra,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We believe this law to be wholly in violation of not only the letter but the spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.”

Joining SAF in the case, which is known as Hardaway v. Bruen, is the Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., on behalf of Bishop Larry A. Boyd of Buffalo and Rev. Dr. Jimmie Hardaway, Jr., of Niagara Falls.

“As we noted in our petition for the TRO,” Gottlieb observed, “Reverend Hardaway has almost always carried a firearm for self-defense on Sundays and at services on the premises of the churches he has pastored. New York has now stripped Reverend Hardaway, Bishop Boyd, and other New Yorkers of their ability to defend themselves should the need arise at their places of worship. The restrictive new statute prevented both men from doing so.”

The motion was filed earlier this week by attorneys David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and John W. Tienken with Cooper & Kirk, PLLC in Washington, D.C., and Nicolas J. Rotsko at Phillips Lytle, LLP in Buffalo. They represent the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, which was filed only a week ago.

friendly reminder you only have 10 days left to register online, by mail, or in person for the general election.  The deadline to register for the general election is October 14th, 2022.

IMPORTANT ELECTION DEADLINES

October 14th, 2022 Deadline to register to vote online, by mail, or in person at the local election office. REGISTER TO VOTE NOW October 24th, 2022 Deadline to Request an Absentee Ballot Online or By Mail.  REQUEST AN ABSENTEE BALLOT October 29th - November 7th, 2022 Early Voting Period G LOCATION November 7th, 2022 Last day to apply IN-PERSON for an absentee ballot. November 8th, 2022 ELECTION DAY   Deadline to Return Absentee Ballot. FIND YOUR POLLING LOCATION

     “Meet the Candidates Night”

• Sponsored by

  Wayne County Shooters Committee On Political Education 

  Wednesday, October 12th., 2022, 7:00 PM

  Marion American Legion
  4141 Witherden Road
  Marion, NY

  Location: On Google Maps

  Focus will be on the upcoming November 8 election and participating candidates.

  Wayne County S.C.O.P.E. (WCS) is inviting candidates for countywide (local/state/federal) offices to attend its October 12, 2022 meeting.  Each candidate will have approximately ten (10) minutes in which to discuss their political platform followed by a Q&A period of the same length. 

  WCS is a member of a statewide organization dedicated to preserving our Civil & Constitutional Rights as stated in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment and Article 2, Section 4 of the New York Civil Rights Law.

  Please note:

• 1.    Please be brief as other items and individuals are on the agenda. 
• 2.    The time intervals will be managed by the Chairman/Vice-Chairman of WCS. 
• 3.    A designated surrogate may replace a candidate who is unable to attend. 
• 4.    This NOT a debate format. We ask candidates to refrain from engaging one another. 
• 5.    Handouts are always welcome. 

Candidates invited include those persons running for: Wayne County Judge; County Legislature; New York State Senate; New York State Assembly; U.S. Congressional District NY-24 or others.  Please reply to this email and indicate if a candidate (surrogate) plans to attend. 

New York Trying To Resurrect Racist Laws To Restrict Gun Ownership

New York is invoking colonial-era bans on selling guns to Native Americans to defend the constitutionality of its “good moral character” standard for obtaining a concealed carry license.

This requirement, part of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) that Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed in July, is set to take effect in September. The Supreme Court struck down a provision of the bill in June that required concealed carry permit applicants to demonstrate a need for self-protection.

Gun Owners of America (GOA), a gun rights lobbying group, sued New York State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen in August, seeking to block the legislation. In response to the lawsuit, Bruen’s lawyers argued in a court filing that the CCIA’s “good moral character” standard is deeply rooted in Anglo-American legal tradition and should therefore be upheld by the court.

“From the early days of English settlement in America, the colonies sought to prevent Native American tribes from acquiring firearms, passing laws forbidding the sale and trading of arms to Indigenous people,” the filing reads. ("From the early days of English settlement in America, the colonies sought to prevent Native American tribes from acquiring firearms...")

Bruen’s lawyers also note that Catholics were barred from owning firearms, both in England and in colonial America, due to their suspected disloyalty. (RELATED: ‘I Don’t Need To Have Numbers’: Gov. Hochul Trying To Pass Strict Gun Control Says She Has No Evidence To Support Her)

“It proves what GOA has been saying for decades, which is that the origin of gun control is racist,” Aidan Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, told the Daily Caller. “Gun laws come from a majority trying to suppress or dominate or control a minority, whether it be a minority of Catholics in early America, or a minority of Native Americans when there’s colonials trying to take over the continent.”

“It is sad, but not surprising, to witness gun control activists harken back to their racist roots,” Craig DeLuz, president and CEO of 2A News Corporation, told the Caller.

“Whether it was the ‘Black Codes’ of the post-slavery South … or the general granting of ‘discretion’ to local law enforcement to decide who was of ‘Good moral character,’ gun control has never been about controlling guns. It’s about controlling people,” DeLuz said.

Recent months have seen a former Marine from Indiana, a Tea Party activist from California and a nurse from Tennessee all arrested and charged in New York City for possession of firearms they had legal permits to carry back home. All were “nabbed” when they naively sought to check the weapon with security.

These innocents fell afoul of the nation’s toughest gun laws. But few New Yorkers know how those laws came to be.

The father of New York gun control was Democratic city pol “Big Tim “Sullivan — a state senator and Tammany Hall crook, a criminal overseer of the gangs of New York.

In 1911 — in the wake of a notorious Gramercy Park blueblood murder-suicide — Sullivan sponsored the Sullivan Act, which mandated police-issued licenses for handguns and made it a felony to carry an unlicensed concealed weapon. 

This was the heyday of the pre-Prohibition gangs, roving bands of violent toughs who terrorized ethnic neighborhoods and often fought pitched battles with police. In 1903, the Battle of Rivington Street pitted a Jewish gang, the Eastmans, against the Italian Five Pointers. When the cops showed up, the two underworld armies joined forces and blasted away, resulting in three deaths and scores of injuries. The public was clamoring for action against the gangs.

Problem was the gangs worked for Tammany. The Democratic machine used them as shtarkers(sluggers), enforcing discipline at the polls and intimidating the opposition. Gang leaders like Monk Eastman were even employed as informal “sheriffs,” keeping their turf under Tammany control.

The Tammany Tiger needed to rein in the gangs without completely crippling them. Enter Big Tim with the perfect solution: Ostensibly disarm the gangs — and ordinary citizens, too — while still keeping them on the streets. 

In fact, he gave the game away during the debate on the bill, which flew through Albany: “I want to make it so the young thugs in my district will get three years for carrying dangerous weapons instead of getting a sentence in the electric chair a year from now.” 

Sullivan knew the gangs would flout the law, but appearances were more important than results. Young toughs took to sewing the pockets of their coats shut, so that cops couldn’t plant firearms on them, and many gangsters stashed their weapons inside their girlfriends’ “bird cages” — wire-mesh fashion contraptions around which women would wind their hair. 

Ordinary citizens, on the other hand, were disarmed, which solved another problem: Gangsters had been bitterly complaining to Tammany that their victims sometimes shot back at them.

So gang violence didn’t drop under the Sullivan Act — and really took off after the passage of Prohibition in 1920. Spectacular gangland rubouts — like the 1932 machine-gunning of “Mad Dog” Coll in a drugstore phone booth on 23rd Street — became the norm.

Albany Responds to SCOTUS Loss with More Control Measures

NY State’s Governor and her majority party have again attacked the Second Amendment and their own law-abiding citizens. One-party tyrannical rule continues to fail us.

All New Yorkers should reject this action regardless of party affiliation and the level of disagreement. Our American mechanism for settling differences is via free speech and open debate in the public square. The continued use of government power to sidestep that debate only increases the divide between the two sides.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently ruled in the NRA’s case (“NYSRPA v. Bruen”)https://scopeny2a.org/Briefings/12103217 that a state’s licensing of firearms is not an infringement on that right as long as states stay within the much more common "shall-issue" systems. This requires pistol licenses be granted upon satisfying objective criteria, such as passing a background check, rather than "may- issue" systems where arbitrary evaluations of need such as “proper cause” may be required by local authorities in an autocratic manner.

Democrats responded with a series of provisions modifying existing sections of law covering concealed-carry of firearms. It was the majority party’s knee-jerk reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision. Legislators had no drafted legislation by 11:30pm despite arriving early on June 30. Then they were forced to study bills in the middle of the night prior to votes on July 1. Phony “Messages of Necessity” were used. Amendments were not accepted nor was input allowed from stakeholders and law enforcement. Albany tactics like these must end.

The Democrat majority did pass a permit law that removes a “special need” requirement for concealed carry (as per the SCOTUS ruling), BUT now requires:

• three-year renewal (recertification) of licenses; (previously five years)
• a police investigation, fingerprints, and four character references; (previously three references) (State Police are now in charge of all investigations for pistol permits.) disclosure of an applicant’s social media accounts going back three years. (Plus, the government can request any other information that is "reasonably necessary and related" to the process, which means any information, including, perhaps, ideological viewpoints);

• sixteen hours of classroom instruction, including two hours of live-fire training and qualification; (required of all permit holders before their permit is RE-certified).
• an in-person interview with the licensing officer;
• a monthly State Police audit of every license-holder to see if a reason exists to revoke a license. (What reasons will be used to revoke a license?)

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Legislation was also passed making it illegal as of September 1, 2022 - and a Class E Felony - to possess a rifle, shotgun or firearm in the following locations:
> Any form of public transportation, including but not limited to:

• railroads;
  
• ride sharing services; paratransit services; subways;
• buses;
• air travel;
• taxis;
• any other public transportation service.

>Food and drink establishments.

>Large gatherings (a gathering of fifteen or more persons for amusement, athletic, civic, dining, educational, entertainment, patriotic, political, recreational, religious, social, or similar purposes. (gun club & SCOPE meetings?)

The new laws create new hurdles to purchasing both guns and ammunition. In lieu of (or in addition to), the current federal instant NICS check, the New York State Police will be tasked with conducting the checks for every firearm and ammunition purchase made in NY State.

Also, “there shall be a statewide license and record database specific for ammunition sales” and the legislation requires that firearms dealers record all ammunition sales in the database. (Does a 9 mm ammo purchase designate you as the owner of a 9 mm pistol?)

How will the prohibition on large gatherings be enforced? By whom? Some members of those public “large gatherings” may be carrying (concealed) in attempt to provide security for themselves and others.

Yet they will now be guilty of a felony and law enforcement officers will be obliged to arrest violators. Note that nothing is written in stone at this point but the laws have been passed.

Don Smith

Chairman

Wayne County Chapter SCOPE of New York

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Dear Wayne SCOPE members:

• This Tuesday, June 28, is Republican Primary Day.  Please vote in both this primary and also the August 23 Primary.  Polls are open from 6am to 9pm for both.

  The June 28 primary will contain primary races for NY State Governor, Lt. Governor and Assembly members.

  The June 28 primary will contain races for various other positions including those for local judges.  Our ratings presented below are for Wayne County Judge.

  The Tuesday, August 23 primary will contain races for NY State Senate and NY Congressional Districts.  

  The General Election Day is Tuesday, November 8.  Polls are open from 6am to 9pm. Early voting period is October 29 to November 6, 2022.

  Your WCS Political Action Contact Team (PACT) – is responsible for communicating and interacting with our local, state, and federal elected officials.

  Emails, phone calls and visits are used to educate them as to our positions on pertinent issues such as pending legislative bills.  The committee meets with candidates and/or other officials as the need arises.  It recently met with the Republican and Conservative candidates for Wayne County Judge on June 28 since it will be necessary to replace the retiring Judge Nesbitt, effective at the end of this calendar year.  

  The role of PACT was to meet separately with each candidate and attempt to establish a rating for each on a scale of A to F.  SCOPE has a 501[c] [4] designation which is granted to not-for-profit organizations that are operated for “social welfare”.  All non-profits engage in advocacy, which involves explaining our mission, discussing issues, and fundraising for our cause.   SCOPE’s designation as a non-profit organization exempts it from taxation yet prevents it from endorsing candidates.   

  But according to the IRS, “Seeking legislation relevant to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes.  Thus, a section 501[c][4] social welfare organization may further its exempt purpose through lobbying as its primary activity without jeopardizing its exempt status.”

  Lobbying for legislative change is treated liberally while advocating for a particular political candidate [i.e., endorsement] is more restricted.  We are allowed to rate candidates however and provide our members with the ratings.  Below is the PACT Committee’s rating of each candidate for Wayne County Judge along with the criteria considered by the committee:
  

  Consideration of the following has contributed to our confidence in the rating of this candidate:

              Strong evidence for protecting the Constitutional /civil rights of law-abiding citizens:

• Strongly supports the Second Amendment. 
•  Strongly supports the right to due process. 
• Strongly supports the right to legally use firearms for self defense. 
• Strongly objects to elected/bureaucratic entities having the right to infringe on possession of firearms.
•  Strongly supports the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. 

•             Strong evidence of opposition to gun control efforts such as:

• The NY SAFE Act
• Extreme Risk Protection Orders (“Red Flag” laws). 
•  Need for gun owners to purchase gun-owner or liability insurance.
•  Banning of semi-automatic firearms, including handguns.
•  Micro-stamping capability of semi-automatic firearms.
•  Background checks to purchase ammunition.
•  Registration of long guns. 
•  Mandatory storage of firearms within one’s home. 

The committee understands that a candidate for a judicial office may agree with the evidence listed above but is not committed to future conduct or decision making that compromises the faithful and impartial performance of judicial duties.

Candidate Michelle Villani was rated A+.  

Candidate Art Williams was rated A.  

The slight difference in rating is explained by the committee as due to a practical knowledge of the judiciary’s role and Second Amendment rights.

Please vote for the candidate of your choice on June 28.