Judging Freedom - NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signs laws to limit gun use

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, June 7th, 2022. It's about 2.20 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation which in her mind will keep New Yorkers safe from people that want to kill them. This was done without debate, without debate in the Senate or the General Assembly of the New York State Legislature. These people want to curtail Second Amendment liberties, and they didn't even have the respect for the Constitution of having a debate. Well, the Democrats control both houses of the legislature, and they control about more than two-thirds of a majority in both houses,

so there's little that those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, in this case, the Second Amendment can do about it. But the legislation that she signed does a lot of things, none of which are going to keep anybody safe, or all of which is going to make it more difficult for people to defend themselves. But I want to talk about two. One is red flag laws, actually three. The other is body armor, and the third is hateful conduct. I'll start with the third. How can the government possibly prohibit hateful conduct? The most hateful thing on the planet is the government. The government exists to negate liberty. All it does is tax or regulate, and whether

it's a tax or regulation, it's taking property or liberty from you. You are allowed to hate the government. You're also allowed to hate your neighbor. It's not a good thing to do. It's self-debilitating and self-destructive. But the government can't tell you what to hate. The government can't define or describe hateful conduct. How the hell can it possibly make it a crime?

I'm sure that the first person who's charged with hateful conduct will challenge the statute and it'll be found unconstitutional. This governor is running in the Democratic primary for nomination as governor. To recall her background, she was not elected governor. She was former governor Andrew Cuomo's lieutenant governor. When Cuomo resigned the governorship, she automatically became governor. Nobody had heard of her, although she is a former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, from northwestern New Jersey. But for her to gloat at efforts to curtail human freedom and to curtail the freedom without even the decency of a debate on the floor of either house of the legislature is reprehensible and defies and negates her

oath to uphold the Constitution. Body armor. Think about it. You want to wear something to protect you and the government won't let you wear it. The government is not going to tell you what you can wear and what you can't wear. You can't wear body armor in New York unless you're a cop. You can't wear a bulletproof vest in New York unless you're a cop. Suppose you're a journalist covering a dangerous event, a riot in the street. Suppose you're a journalist that has to go overseas and you go to your apartment to take the body armor and you go down the elevator and you're about to get in the cab, the police see you with it and they arrest you. This is just absurd. You

have the right to wear on your body whatever you want and it's none of the government's business. Okay, she says. The crazy guy, the racist that killed 10 people in a supermarket in Buffalo was wearing body armor, and that's why we couldn't stop him. No, you couldn't stop him because nobody was a good shot, because nobody in there had a gun, except a retired cop who hadn't qualified with the gun in five years. You need to qualify every six months. If he had qualified with a gun, it would have hit him in a part of his body that wasn't covered by the body armor. Again, the government's solution to a problem is not to allow us to protect ourselves but to emasculate us, decent, law-abiding people from protecting ourselves, reprehensible and profoundly unconstitutional. There's an area of jurisprudence

called substantive due process, and it basically governs intimate decisions of the body, who you're going to sleep with, who you're going to marry, what kind of birth control you're going to use, what kind of clothing you're going to wear. All of that is covered by substantive due process. Substantive due process is immune from regulation by the government, thanks be to God. Third area in which she signed legislation is to give more money to localities to finance red flag laws. Red flag laws are some of the most profoundly unconstitutional things ever devised by the mind of man. Red flag laws remind me of Florence in the 1440s, where in the back of the churches and cathedrals was a little box. And you could put in that box the name of someone whom you alleged committed a sin of the flesh,

having sex with someone to whom they're not married. And the police would often take those names and on the basis of that secret complaint, torture people in order to get them to confess. All right, we're on to torture. Torture does go on. The CIA does do it. My column this week is about the latest expose on torture involving a former director of the CIA. Another subject for another time. My point is this.

An anonymous complaint to the police, I saw so-and-so lose his temper in a restaurant and I know he has a gun, you better go take it from him, will allow a judge to take the gun from so-and-so. Well, now that violates a whole host of constitutional protections. It violates due process because it's a deprivation of liberty and property without a trial. It violates your right to confront your accusers because there's no hearing in which you are accused. It's just the complaint. And if the judge finds the complaint as credible, he's going to dispatch the police to take your guns. Guns protected by the Second Amendment. Guns which Justice Scalia called a natural extension of the ancient right to self-defense. I don't like to attack people. I like to attack ideas. I believe that everybody has some decency in them, including this crazy

governor of New York who must be terrified she's not going to get the Democratic nomination. But she has signed some of the most reprehensible, unconstitutional legislation that has ever come to the mind of men and women. And there wasn't even a debate about it. All these things should be invalidated. Some judges have been upholding the red flag laws, but there's really no opportunity to challenge them because they come and take your gun before they even tell you that someone's filed a complaint against you. Somewhere Joe Stalin is happy. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.