Source: US State of New York
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul participated in a Clinton Global Initiative fireside chat on gun violence prevention.
VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).
AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.
PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page has photos of the event here.
A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: So the issue we are about to talk about, gun violence, is urgent, complex, and multifaceted. Before we jump into some of the solutions and approaches you’ve taken in New York, I’d like to talk to you about how you’ve addressed the issue here. First to start out I’d like to talk about one of the countless tragedies that has befallen our state. The May 2022, mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, your hometown. Tell me what that was like and what actions you’ve taken as a result.
Governor Hochul: Well, it was the most horrific event in Buffalo’s history and that was ten minutes from where I live. That was an area I’ve been to so many times. I knew the people. And to have an individual who was radicalized online, which again is another topic, but really important as to how people are developing these horrible, horrible thoughts. And his intent was to replicate the shooting in New Zealand just a few years before. So he learned how to do it online is the point.
He was able to walk into a store on his 18th birthday and to be able to buy an AK-47. Okay? Buy it. Go over to Pennsylvania where they have different laws and a magazine enhancer so he could have the highest number of casualties possible. And what he did was he looked geographically to find the largest black population closest to him. It was 3 hours and 10 minutes to Buffalo, it would have been 3 hours and 20 minutes to Brooklyn. Or to, to the Bronx. So he was trying to find a population that he intentionally wanted to slaughter. He scoped out the location. He knew where he was going. And when I went there and saw the scene of that massacre and held weeping families and hugging them and just trying to give some comfort to them, I knew I had to do something in that moment. Dramatic. And change the whole dynamic, change every law I could in the State of New York. And that has been an inspiration to me, to know that can happen in an innocent place. A sunny day in May, where people are shopping for groceries, including a dad who is buying a birthday cake for his little girl’s third birthday that he never got to see. I’ve held that little girl. And this just tears at you. At a very human level.
And all of us in government – we shouldn’t have to wait to have the kind of slaughter I saw in Buffalo or you experienced in covering Uvalde, and other people have day after day to a point where my fear is that people become desensitized to this and they don’t have that shock and that sense of urgency to do something. I don’t ever want to get to that place in this country because it would be a sad commentary on how far we’ve fallen.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: In the last few years, more than 20 states including New York, have passed new laws restricting how people can buy and carry guns but we’re seeing data that indicates there’s a thriving underground market for guns. Can you talk about the 2022 Interstate Task Force to stop the illegal trafficking of guns?
Governor Hochul: When I took office three years ago, we were in the throes of a major crime wave nationwide, not just New York. It was a nationwide phenomena. And my husband was the United States Attorney for Barack Obama. And I saw how collaboration can help and eradicate crime. And I thought, why don’t we harness the power of not just New York State, but all of our neighbors? Because 80 percent of the guns in New York come from out of state. We don’t manufacture them. So there is a pipeline that’s bringing these guns right to the streets of New York, and we have to stop that.
So I reached out to other Governors. We had nine at first. We now have 12 states that are all contiguous. And if we’re sharing data, identifying perpetrators, stopping them at the border, we can stop the flow of illegal guns from coming into our state. And the numbers have been incredibly successful.
The number of gunned addictions about 9,500. We’ve taken 10,000 guns off the streets. These are numbers that were just escalating year after year until someone finally says, “We’re gonna work together. I’ll put the resources behind it.” We have spent over 800 million directly on gun interdiction measures and another billion dollars to help support our local communities for the gun violence disrupter program. So combined almost $2 billion into in three years to say no more, no more slaughter in my state.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: Following our conversation here I’m going to dive in with our panelists on community based solutions and approaches that they’re doing on the ground throughout the country. We know that these solutions from the communities themselves are promising toward reducing gun related injuries and killings. In a similar vein from your perch what do you see as promising solutions and approaches to the issue?
Governor Hochul: It does absolutely come down to engaging the community. They’re the ones who are victimized. They’re the ones who often see perpetrators. They’re the ones who have evidence that can come forward.
But also, how do we change the hearts and minds of particularly young men? Young kids in these neighborhoods who think that the only alternative they have is to be part of a gang because they’re not getting the love and nurture they need at home. This becomes their family. And that is what’s so tragic about this.
But, what you can do with these violence disruptor programs, and we funded so many of them, all across the state – is that oftentimes these might be former gang members, these are people who’ve been involved with the law. And so they’re the ones who have the story to say, don’t make the same mistake I did. And if we fund them and increase the number of them in every community, they are making a real difference. So I’m going to continue focusing on not just the law enforcement side, which has been quite extraordinary.
And back to changing our laws, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a law that we had on the books for over 100 years. A concealed carry law that says you should not be able to walk into this venue right now with a gun in your pocket, go on our subways, walk around Times Square. And the Supreme Court took that power away from me as the Governor of New York to protect my citizens. And I said, the next day, we’re fighting back. We’re going to structure a different law. We’ll go right up to the line. to where we can go and now we’ve identified sensitive locations, which is a large part of New York where you cannot carry a gun, including Times Square and houses of worship and other places. So I had to come around and do an end run basically around what the Supreme Court was trying to do, taking away my rights.
So the violence disruptor programs, the massive funding into law enforcement, the community policing, the interdiction at the borders with our consortium is making a difference to a point where our murders are down almost to the 1960s levels, which is extraordinary. In one year, we had, in 1990, we had 2,600 murders in the State of New York. We’re trending to be about 350 this year. Look at the difference in that. It’s gone. Shootings are down 47 percent since I became Governor because we had an intentional strategy that said, “We’re not going to lose any more lives senselessly to guns.”
And again the laws are so important the laws that we have on the books – the red flag laws. We had about 1,300 Extreme Risk Protection Orders – when you identify someone who shows a propensity to do harm to themselves or to others, someone sees that red flag – a school counselor, a family member, a, law enforcement, a principal, a teacher, someone’s seeing this behavior, someone’s watching it. And they don’t think they have the power to do something about it. But we said, “You do have the power.” And by changing the law to say you are required to notify the authorities so they can identify whether they have access to a gun, we have had a 1,300 percent increase in the number of Extreme Risk Protection Orders where other states aren’t doing anything.
And I need to, this should be a national policy. This should be a national policy passed by Congress because we have taken guns out of the hands that we know from people that could do harm to others before there’s a tragedy that happens. This is what smart policies are all about. Getting there before you have to go to another funeral of a child. And that’s what I want to continue doing here in New York. And I hope other states will follow suit.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: The Supreme Court stands poised to knock down any legislation, attempts to legislate the gun violence epidemic. You mentioned going right up to the line. What is that line? What can you do? What can’t you do?
Governor Hochul: We weren’t allowed to ban concealed carry weapons, but I put in place more restrictions on who can apply for them. We are able to look at your social media. That’s where people are telegraphing what they’re going to do. That was our Buffalo killer. It was all out there on social media. It’s often out there. People are telegraphing what they’re going to do. And if you can’t be aware of that and you can’t see what’s out there about them, then you’re not protecting yourself or society.
My number one job as Governor of the State is to protect our citizens. Full stop. And this is part of that strategy. So we made – we have more requirements on background checks. Our background checks are very strong, but even if someone is able to secure a concealed weapon permit and many of them are legitimate, there’s people in security and there are legitimate purposes that I will agree with, but it’s time, place and manner.
And again, I don’t want them on the streets of New York. I don’t think that’s appropriate. I don’t think it should be in a schoolyard. That’s not appropriate. A playground. So many places, they don’t make that. So we went right, when they said, I can’t ban them, I said, but they threw some words about sensitive places and I define sensitive places in New York and our law is holding, so far.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: You mentioned violence diversion programs. What’s entailed in these programs?
Governor Hochul: We fund an enormous number of these. We know the neighborhoods where they need them. These are individuals who – community based organizations, SNUG is one of them. It’s just “guns” spelled backwards.
It’s one I was familiar with in Buffalo, New York. Like I said, I was – I have a family member in law enforcement, a prosecutor, and I saw the power of these organizations when they got together. I did a lot of events with them. We announced a lot of funding for them all over the state. And what they do is, they develop relationships.
They intervene because if a young person has a strong role model at home, both parents, one parent, grandparents, someone that’s taking care of them and watching them and knows where they are after school and keep an eye on them. There’s not likely to be a problem, but that’s not the reality for so many families in so many of our communities.
The parents have to work, the mom has to work, and there’s no one there after school. And this is where the temptation is great to find alternatives. These members, like I said, many of them have done time themselves. They can speak truth to what they saw. They’re credible messengers that are the only ones who can break through and make a difference.
And they’ve been successful and I’ll keep supporting them over and over again as part of a holistic strategy. But another part of that strategy deals with mental health. We have seen the radicalization of people on social media, but also our teenagers are – many of them are despairing. And I’ve seen this because I’ve convened countless roundtables with teenagers over the last year as I look at social media, the effect it has on their well being, how they feel about themselves, and also cell phones in schools.
This is an issue I’m looking intensely at because kids are spiraling. They’re not paying attention in class. They’re being bullied all day long. They don’t have a break from it. And one young woman said to me at one of our forums, “You have to save us from ourselves. You have to help us. You have to stand up and say we shouldn’t be doing this because we can’t do it alone.”
So that’s only tangentially related to gun violence, but it also goes to the psychology of people. And if we’re not helping children and teenagers be healthy now, what are we supposed to expect from them when they turn to adults? We’re supposed to not just raise children, but raise adults who are healthy and fully functioning and have human connections that they’re being denied right now. The way this device has taken over their lives.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: I have to wrap up here. But one more question. If there’s one key message that you’d the audience here, to walk away with, what would it be?
Governor Hochul: We have seen in New York State, that leadership that is committed to ensuring that you look at all the levers at our disposal, the platforms we have, the ability to change.
There are ways that we can stop gun violence in this country. We can be like the other countries who are gathering in our city right now that don’t know a fraction of the shootings we have. It’s accessibility to guns. I continue to call on Congress to do the right thing and reinstate the ban on assault weapons that was so effective for an entire decade until it was repealed.
That’s number one. Call on other states to do as we’ve done with the red flag law. Just pass what we did here in New York and you could have prevented so many of the mass shootings. Every time you look at and analyze the social media and the footprint that’s out there for these shooters, it’s always telegraphed in advance.
You can – and they – and there’s always someone who says, “Yeah, I thought that kid was – Something wrong was there.” The evidence is there. We have to give people the responsibility to report it to law enforcement. Let them get the order of protection. And let’s start protecting people. That’s what this is all about.
I would say, don’t give up hope. The situation is dire. It is spiraling. One more mass shooting on the news is just making us sick and it’s taking us to a dark place, but it does not have to be that way. I reject the notion that this has to be our destiny. There are policies out there that are working.
Otherwise, how do we cut shootings down 47 percent? This is all since I’ve been Governor in just a few years. Look at the impact that we have had here in the State of New York. I want every state to be just like that. And then we start reclaiming our kids and our safety and the mental health that we need to know that we are safe in our country.
Gabriel Arana, Texas Observer Former Editor-in-Chief: Governor Hochul, thank you so much for being here.
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