Designed to Fail? Not this Republic!

Speaking with a technology expert at length and several times in the past week, I put it to him bluntly:  “If this were a Microsoft project and I was Bill Gates would you be recommending we scrap the launch?”  On every level of analysis, from the user experience to the customer outcome to the front-end programming to the server space requirements to the cyber-attacks to public safety objectives, the NYS Police take-over and expansion of the firearms and ammunition background check systems is a failure.  It’s not “just” the electronic background check system that has failed, there is no telephone component at all – as required by statute.  And there are what?  Six agents numbered #320 through #326 who identify as police officers, who may be sitting at an unsecured laptop at home, who are programmed to say “We’re aware of that.”

If Governor Hochul had any leadership skills, she would pull her police system and get federally-licensed dealers in firearms across this state back on direct-connect to the FBI-NICS.  And, the ATF would jump in to write a guidance document about recordkeeping best practices during these ten days.

But, of course, Hochul won’t.  Repeal herself.  The woman who is the architect of the 2022 laws she jammed through doesn’t have the policy maturity to pull the launch.  That’s because Hochul’s goal isn’t public safety.  She has no appreciation for the responsibilities at federal law performed daily by federally-licensed dealers in conjunction with the FBI and the ATF for more than twenty-five years.  She has no ownership that she is the reason NYS-convicted felons can go out-of-state and buy guns because she won’t tell the FBI their names. 

What Kathy Hochul wants, Kathy Hochul got:  a police state system that is designed to fail.

Hochul’s only motivation for the police system is to capture as much personal information about gun owners as possible until either the system, itself, collapses from technical failures, or, a judge tells her to stop and she stops.  The NYS Police, in the meantime, are vacuuming up names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, makes/models/serial numbers of firearms + manufacturer/caliber/rounds of ammunition.

Hochul is apparently so embarrassed by the police performance failures that she hasn’t said one word to the media since September 13.  Instead, the ghost governor has a surrogate female from an Everytown affiliate who is making the quote rounds in the press.

Meanwhile, for the public, the $2.50 state background check fee for a box of ammunition has become the symbol of this constitutional catastrophe.  Dealer after dealer across the state is being interviewed, especially by regional newspapers that still have reporters, and FFLs have given probative information into print about a range of system crashes to browser interface deficiencies to delays, denials, pending investigations, and under-21s.

Essentially, the response of the state GOP is the one quote from Assemblyman Smullen who gave Hochul a pass and offered sympathy to the police.  Per Spectrum News, “Assemblyman Robert Smullen, a Republican from Fulton County, said he's heard State Police are struggling with the database rollout.  It's one of those things whenever you try to do a system the first time usually doesn't go very well, and that's what I'm hearing," he said.”  No GOP resolution to censure Hochul.  No GOP bill to repeal.  Not even a group of GOP-men in suits at a laminated podium in front of the tatty curtain in the LOB Press Room, blustering in the name of individual liberties.

While the NYS GOP may not have done their jobs, NYS-based federally-licensed dealers did. It is the dealers who every day are pounding the Governor’s police over the failures of the power-grab system, calling out one violation after another all the way down to the simple bottom line that the Amish are now blocked from buying ammunition and high schoolers are the subject of New York State Police files.

Somewhere after 9:00 a.m. EST, I’ll pull myself back together as a professional and will take off my Mrs. Maisel Season 6 voice and I will dig into day 34 of fighting like hell to hold the line with FFLs and constitution-loving individuals.  I will start drafting my next White Paper – working title “To Keep or Not to Keep: the Plight of Federally-Licensed Dealers in Firearms in New York” – and I will leave a blank page or two under the heading “Ruling by Thomas – SCOTUS” for the upcoming case conference outcome.

Today, I thank you and turn on the kettle for coffee, black. Today, I start a two-week run of calling dealers across the state in response to the many e-mails, voicemails, texts, and messengered reports from the field.  There are also calls to make to dealers who we’ve lost in the past three weeks to closure; some who hung on to just before the system went live, and some who were swamped by heartbreak in the past week.  We are recording history for FFLs nationwide and for Second Amendment advocates around the country.  How New York goes, so, too, additional states, if we can’t hold this line. 

Which is exactly what Hochul hopes will be her legacy: chaos, confusion, and a tear in the parchment of the Constitution, itself.

As a woman, not so different in age, not so different in an interest in serving in Congress.  As a fellow attorney.  Having a Buffalo connection from law school.  —Just before sunrise in the mountains and with my too-early mug of tea drained, I look at the fading stars of a morning sky and see Hochul.  I quietly admit one defeat:  I will never understand where our post-Reagan, middle-class, well-educated, alpha females lost Hochul somewhere back along the road. 

How the hell did Hochul’s goal become failure?  And how the hell can she be surrounded by others like herself?

What I have decided upon waking is that Hochul can go ahead and fail all on her own. There isn’t a way to retrieve someone that far down the wrong road, any more than there is a way to fix the NYS Police background check system. Both Hochul and her computer programs are balanced upon faulty principles. Both she, and “it,” will fail.

We, my friends, have the Second Amendment to defend. 

The last line of civil rights.  The shutdown valve of the Constitution.  We have been sounding the alarm since we filed Gazzola v. Hochul last November, and we’re going to have to continue doing so, including through the SCOTUS case conference results to be announced on October 10.  Those who were aware stocked up.  Many more are now waking up and we’ve got lots of educating to do.  And for those of you walking into dealers saying you’re going out of state?  Either get with the program or stay home; you’re of less than no use.  We have work to do.  The very success of this “last great experiment for promoting human happiness” is at stake.  And I, for one, am planning to keep it.

Kettle’s boiling? Tits Up!