After Midtown Shooting, Kathy Hochul Demands Spreading NY’s Failed Gun Control Policies to the Rest of America

New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul is apparently taking her cues from Rahm Emmanuel these days. At least when it comes to gun control demands.

Emmanuel is, of course, former Ambassador Emmanuel who served as America’s top diplomat to Japan and was the Mayor of Chicago. Previous to that, he was Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, and was also the architect of President Bill Clinton’s gun control agenda. Emmanuel was also a U.S. Representative in Congress. It was during that stint that he infamously said in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” when a financial crisis gripped the United States and Emmanuel used it to push ideological policies that might have been unthinkable outside of the calamity.

Following the heinous murders by a deranged individual in a Manhattan office building, Gov. Hochul demanded that AR-15s, which she intentionally mislabels and derides as “assault weapons,” must be banned from ownership by law-abiding citizens across the nation. She pointed to New York’s onerous gun control laws as the example the rest of the country should follow.

“The killer used an AR-15–style assault rifle. The same weapon of war used in mass shootings across America,” said Gov. Hochul in a statement. “New York has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. We banned assault weapons. We strengthened our Red Flag Law. We closed dangerous loopholes. But our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder.”

Gov. Hochul’s protestations, though, only reveal the folly of her argument. New York has strict gun control laws. None of them, however, stopped a murderer intent on committing unthinkable and sickening acts of violence from carrying out his crimes. New York’s laws only leave law-abiding citizens defenseless against such individuals who have no respect for gun control laws or human life.

Knives, Fists and Clubs

The murders in Manhattan are despicable as any murder is. That’s not in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is the gravity of the “crisis” that Gov. Hochul and other gun control advocates are attaching to the criminal misuse of firearms – specifically to the modern sporting rifle.

The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer tracks all types of crime and their occurrences, including homicides. That five-year national data, 2018 to 2023, shows that there were at total of 90,650 murders in the United States. Of those, 8,107 murders were committed by a murderer using a knife or cutting instrument. There were an additional 1,925 murders committed using a blunt instrument. Add to that 459 asphyxiation murders. The total of those three is 10,491.

Compare that to instances of murderers criminally misusing a rifle, which totaled 2,469. That’s the total for all rifles, not just MSRs – or the misnamed “assault rifles” Gov. Hochul wants to ban.

Put another way, murderers using knives, fists and clubs came in at 11 percent of all murders tallied by the FBI between 2018 and 2023. The criminal misuse of rifles – of all types – tallied just 2.72 percent of all murders.

Gov. Hochul, then, would strip the rights of all law-abiding citizens because of crimes committed by an infinitesimally small sliver of the American population that doesn’t respect life or law. Given the American population stands at roughly 340 million, murderers criminally misusing all types or rifles — not just MSRs — equals just .00007 percent of the population.

New York’s Laws

New York’s law banning so-called “assault weapons” would have covered the rifle the Midtown murderer criminally misused in his crimes. That law bans MSRs based on cosmetic features that have no bearing on the how the rifle actually functions. New York bans rifles that have a folding or telescoping stock, a pistol grip, thumbhole stock, a foregrip (or grip below the barrel that can be grasped by the non-shooting hand) or a bayonet lug.

None of those features made his rifle any more lethal than if he’d chosen to commit those crimes with a handgun.

New York’s gun control laws, however, make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against crazed killers. The murderer at Manhattan’s 345 Park Place knew he was going to an area that was largely disarmed – by the very state authorities that are responsible for protecting its citizens.

Just blocks away from 345 Park Place is New York City’s Times Square “gun-free zone,” where no one is allowed to carry a firearm at all, even if they have a valid concealed carry permit. That law, signed by Gov. Hochul in 2022, failed to stop a murder in Times Square by a criminal misusing a firearm in February of 2023. There was also a shooting of three teens in 2023 that wasn’t prevented by the “gun free zone” signs. It also didn’t prevent a food cart vendor from being shot by an attacker in April of 2025.

Even when law-abiding citizens want to legally purchase a firearm, they must navigate the obstacles that make that process cumbersome and costly. New Yorkers buying a handgun or semiautomatic rifle must obtain a government-issued license, which is only available to adults over 21. That means adults under 21 are discriminated against by the state’s age-based gun ban. Those citizens must also pass a “good moral character” test, which is subjective and open to interpretation by state authorities. That process includes background checks, fingerprinting, an interview and character references. That all comes with fees, of course, and takes considerable time – typically six to 12 months.

This is all in the state that’s taken a soft-on-crime approach at the same time. Cash bail is a thing of the past in New York. Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg refuses to bring charges against repeat offenders, allowing them to walk back out on the streets and continue to terrorize victims. DA Bragg, backed by gun control billionaire George Soros, admitted that crime is so bad in New York City that he’s afraid to ride the subway.

America doesn’t need Gov. Hochul’s gun control policies. New Yorkers need to be rescued from the crisis she’s created in their state.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.