Morning Wire - NY Gun Laws Concern Sheriffs | 10.12.22

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

New York sheriffs push back on the state’s new gun control laws, Twitter censors Florida’s surgeon general over the state’s new Covid vaccine guidance, and sparks fly as Ohio’s senate candidates face off in their first debate. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sheriffs in New York are pushing back on the state's new gun laws, saying they'll use discretion in enforcing them. The law bans guns in sensitive locations, but the sheriffs say the restrictions unfairly target law-abiding citizens. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, October 12th, and this is Morning Wire. Florida's official health policy was censored by Twitter this week when the state advised young men against getting the jab. Yes, COVID can be terrible. but we don't give people medications that kill them. We'll discuss the analysis that led Florida to depart from the mainstream guidance. And J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan go head to head in the all-important Ohio Senate debate.

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Six sheriffs in New York have banded together to announce that they will not aggressively enforce the state's new gun control measures, which went into effect in September. This comes after several key aspects of the law were overruled by the courts. Fulton County Sheriff Richard Giordino told Fox News that the new law disproportionately targets

law-abiding citizens with concealed carry licenses and that while he was not refusing to enforce the laws, he and others would be using discretion in responding to cases, from the new restrictions on gun carrying. Here to discuss is columnist David Marcus. Hey, Dave. So what are these restrictions that the sheriffs are objecting to?

Morning. So this gun control law provided a sweeping list of places in the state where even those allowed to carry firearms would not be permitted to churches, stores, public events, most notably Times Square, where small laminated signs have been posted announcing it as a gun-free zone to more than a few jokes. The sheriffs really have two objections here. One is that they feel people should be able to protect themselves in these spaces, but also they don't want to divert their already scarce resources

to focus on legal gun owners who are going about their day. Last week, a federal judge blocked many of the provisions in this legislation saying that they violated the Constitution because they had no historical justification. That's a standard established by Justice Clarence Thomas last year. What aspects were blocked and why? Right. So Justice Thomas's language says that gun control must be, quote, consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, unquote, which includes allowing self-defense in most public spaces. On this basis, the judge allowed restrictions in polling places, churches, and schools. But that's about it. In most of the locations listed in the law, like public transportation, that includes subways, those are sporting events and many others, the judge said the right to carry, not be curtailed. He also struck down a controversial element of the legislation that required gun purchasers to hand over three years of social media to the state.

Now, New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, has appealed the decision and asked the court to allow the law to stay in effect pending that appeal. If that happens, what are these sheriffs saying they'll do? Again, they're not saying refusal to enforce it. They're saying discretion. Geridano gave the example of not rushing to confront someone if there's a report, they have a bulge in their pocket. Also cited the fact that these kinds of new laws and restrictions, with them there's a learning curve for the law abiding. But the broader message is that this isn't what law enforcement wants or needs, and the sheriffs complain that law enforcement was never asked what they do need by the legislature. This comes before the backdrop of a governor's race, which as you

reported earlier this week has significantly tightened. Incumbent Kathy Hokel says this is actually a tough on-crime measure that will lower gun violence. Is that how it's playing with the voters? It doesn't seem like it, but yes, this was passed through very quickly late this summer by Democrats in response to growing concern about crime across the state, as well as a Supreme Court decision striking down the previous gun laws. The problem is that this doesn't really address the kind of street crime that New Yorkers are most worried about.

This was rather punctuated this weekend when a shooting took place outside the Long Island home of Lee Zeldin, the Republican cat. for governor. I mean, you really can't make it up. Right. And look, certainly Zeldin's going to make some political hay of these sheriffs calling out a Democrat-led state government. Dave, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus.

Social media platform Twitter removed a post from Florida's Surgeon General last week that announced a new COVID guidance recommending young men not get the vaccine due to cardiac risks. The move is prompting new warnings about the power of big tech to censor speech. Wire culture reporter, Megan Basham, is here to give us details on Florida's new guidance, what data it was based on, and how Twitter is responding. So, Megan, big social media platforms suppressing certain medical opinions is nothing new. But I just want to clarify, in this case, Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Lodopo, was not simply tweeting his opinion. He was actually announcing Florida's new COVID guidance policy. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. And I

I know we have talked about big tech tamping down on posts from dissenting doctors or other medical experts, but in this case, as you say, Dr. Lodoppo is a government official, albeit at a state level. And the post in question linked to the state's new guidance that recommended younger men aged 18 to 39 not get that COVID vaccine due to an increased risk of myocarditis, otherwise known as heart inflammation. And his post also linked to analysis of data that the Florida Department of Health conducted to support their decision. And that analysis found an 84% increase in cardiac-related death for younger men within 28 days following vaccination. Okay, so before we talk about what Twitter did, I want to talk about that analysis because I know there's been some criticism of its methodology. Yeah, there has. For example, some critics said that it wasn't clear the vaccine caused the myrower. myocarditis in that group. It could have been some other factor. So I reached out to Dr. Marty McCarrey,

who is a surgical oncologist and professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins, to ask him specifically about that. Public health officials have said, you can't make a correlation between this cardiac death and the vaccine without a formal study. And they've chosen never to do those studies. They've never funded those studies. They don't release data to do those studies. So Florida said we're going to going to do that study ourselves. And they used a very elegant study design, which was to say, let's look at all heart attacks or cardiac deaths six months after COVID vaccination. And let's ask ourselves, did they occur at an equal distribution over those six months, or were they clustered in the month after the vaccine? And what they found is the latter. They were clustered in the

immediate four weeks after vaccination. Now, I also saw some criticism that this analysis was not peer reviewed. Yes, that came up a lot, and McCarrey addressed that too. Well, peer review just means that as few as one or two other doctors, any doctor in the United States has read the study and said, this looks reasonable. Well, now there are so many publications that you can get anything published. So many researchers have said, given that peer review is not much more than the comments in a comment box after an article, why don't we just go ahead and let the data speak for itself? And that is essentially what Florida did and what's going on now that Twitter has restored Lodapo's tweet. And he's posted some additional information about the state's analysis since then.

Okay, and now I want to talk about that. So Twitter took down the announcement. What was their reasoning for that. Well, the notification that replaced the post while it was being blocked said it was for violating Twitter's rules. And as far as what rule would apply, Twitter's policy includes the right to take down tweets that contain misleading information related to COVID-19. We've heard that a lot. But they haven't offered any explanation beyond that. And about a day and a half later, after some pretty healthy public outcry, you have to say, that post was restored. Right. Well, Megan, thanks for reporting. My pleasure. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.

Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance faced off on the debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday evening. Ryan, a 10-term congressman and Vance, a popular author and political newcomer, took part in the first of two debates, scheduled in the race to be the next U.S. Senator for Ohio. Here to recap the debate is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So, Tim, an actual debate between Senate candidates, not many of those are happening these days, what did we see in this first debate? What really stuck out was the amount of direct attacks. Ryan went after Vance's funding, work in the private sector, and even a nonprofit Vance launched in 2017. Vance attacked Ryan's two-decade career in the U.S. House and his lack of experience in the private sector.

They both attempted to paint the other as extreme. All right, so let's start off with the issue that Americans care most about the economy. what did the candidates say about inflation and other economic factors? Vance blamed record high inflation on the Biden administration and noted that Tim Ryan voted in lockstep with President Biden. He is simultaneously they borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we just don't have and that's thrown fuel on the fire of the inflation problem. And at the same time, they've completely gone to war against America's energy sector. And you can't do both of those things at the same time. They're each bad ideas.

But when you do both of them at the same time, you're going to get record inflation. which is exactly what you expect to get. Ryan, for his part, blamed inflation on supply chain issues and claimed that Vance and businessmen like him were the chief culprits. J.D. Vance has invested into companies in China. The problem we're having now with inflation is our supply chains all went to China. And guys like him have made a lot of money off that. And that is exactly why the supply chains are locked up.

As we've noted a few times since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Democrats have campaigned very heavily on abortion. What do the candidates say about that issue? Ryan said he supported codifying the standard set out in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a right to an abortion, but let state set time limits generally measured in weeks. But as Vance pointed out, Ryan voted this year for the Democrats' Reproductive Freedom Act, which goes beyond Roe and would overturn many states' abortion laws. Here's Ryan. I support going back to Roe v. Wade. That was established law for 50 years, and we didn't have all the chaos that we're having now. One of the most notable moments came when Vance was asked about how his pro-life stance relates to the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who got an abortion out of state.

Vance said he supports reasonable exceptions on abortion and blame the whole situation on Democrats' immigration policies. I've said repeatedly on the record that I think that that girl should be able to get an abortion if she and her family so choose to do so. But let's talk about that case. The thing they never mentioned is that that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien. somebody that should have never been in this state in the first place. You voted so many times against border wall funding, so many times for amnesty, Tim. If you had done your job, she would have never been raped in the first place. For his part, Ryan did address the border and acknowledged it's a real problem. He also attempted to distance himself from Vice President Kamala Harris, who has insisted

that border is secure. Kamala Harris is absolutely wrong on that. It's not secure. We have a lot of work to do. I'm not here to just get in a fight or just tow the Democratic part. line. I'm here to speak the truth. Ryan and Vance were also asked about what they consider to be the greatest threat to democracy. Ryan pointed to Republican extremists and tried to link Vance to a few high-profile names.

Who says that the president of the United States is intentionally trying to kill people with fentanyl? Who says that the election was stolen? J.D. Vance does. Who runs around with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who wants to ban books? He's running around with Lindsey Graham, who wants a national abortion ban. You're running around with Marjorie Taylor Green, who's the absolute looniest politician in America. This is a dangerous group, and we do need to confront it. Vance, on the other hand, said that coordination between social media platforms

and the federal government to shut down certain views and even major news stories is the biggest threat right now. A very interesting debate. Tim, thanks for the rundown. Thanks for having me. That was DailyWires, Tim Pierce. Another story we're tracking this week. The latest Monmouth poll shows that Republicans have retaken the lead in the generic congressional ballot.

47% of respondents prefer Republicans to take control of Congress, while 44% want Democrats. In August, 50% prefer Democrats. Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.