ALBANY – New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said he will push for stronger gun laws in 2019.
The Governor vowed Thursday to pass the Red Flag Bill, also known as the extreme risk protection order bill, which would prevent individuals who show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from purchasing or possessing any kind of firearm.
“The scourge of gun violence in our nation is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and we are not going to wait for the federal government to act on passing gun safety legislation,” said Governor Cuomo in a statement. “New York already has the strongest gun safety laws in the nation, and we are taking additional steps to make our laws even stronger and keep our communities, and our schools, safe.”
If passed, this law would make New York the first state in the United States to allow its teachers and school administrators to pursue court intervention.
In addition, Cuomo said he will push to ban bump stocks and extend the background check waiting period for purchasing guns from three to ten days, saying it will allow sufficient time to complete the background check and build on efforts to ensure that only those eligible to purchase and own a firearm are able to do so.
Current federal law requires gun dealers to conduct background checks on a potential purchaser prior to selling a firearm, which immediately provides the dealer with one of three possible notifications: “proceed”, “denied”, or “delayed”.
In the case of a “delayed” response, the dealer must wait three days before the sale is eligible to go through, even though the FBI continues to investigate these individuals past the three-day timeframe.
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