BELLEVUE, WA – By placing his signature on legislation that prevents local New York State school districts from authorizing armed volunteer staff, including teachers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made schools more vulnerable to attack and signaled that fact to every deranged person looking for a headline, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
Under the new law, schools will not be allowed to authorize anyone who is not a security guard, school resource officer or police officer to have a firearm on school grounds. Cuomo argued that this measure will help keep “unwanted or illegal” guns off school campuses. It comes right after he signed other anti-rights legislation extending the background check waiting period, banning so-called “undetectable guns” and expanding so-called “safe storage” requirements.
“Governor Cuomo’s answer to failed restrictive gun laws is more new gun laws that prevent people from being able to protect themselves, their families and, in this case, the children under their instruction and care, from violent criminals and crazy people,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Cuomo’s adherence to, and perpetuation of, the safety myth of so-called ‘gun-free school zones’ borders on delusion.
“All he has done by signing these gun control bills is to make it harder for honest citizens to be legally armed, while criminals won’t be the least bit deterred,” he continued. “The real danger to people in New York is his appointment of his cronies to parole boards that let violent offenders out of prison early.”
Gottlieb said the governor, now in his third term, is enacting policies that are driving good citizens out of the Empire State.
“He thinks that allowing armed school staff will result in accidents or acts of violence, but that has not happened anywhere such programs are in place,” Gottlieb observed. “He thinks disarming law-abiding citizens will make them safer. Because of Cuomo-backed anti-gun rights policies in New York, people are moving in droves to less gun restrictive states like South Carolina, Florida and Texas where they can have the means to self-defense.”