New York Governor Andrew Cuomo doesn’t care about gun owners. In fact, I can’t help but believe that he’s really alright with turning legions of law-abiding New Yorkers into criminals simply because they own guns. This is especially clear, since he did so little to deal with the clusterflop New York law that requires even people with lifetime gun permits to recertify.

There was a lot of confusion over the law, and a lot of people didn’t get notification of their need to recertify.

Now, at least, there’s a little bit of a reprieve. It seems the New York State Police won’t be enforcing the recertify rules just yet.

With thousands of pistol permit holders yet to re-up by the end of the month, state police say they will not take action on those who “unknowingly failed to recertify.”

As of Wednesday, authorities say that just 262,114 New Yorkers have submitted a pistol permit re-certification. However, with an estimated 1.2 million formerly lifetime permits in circulation and the SAFE Act-mandated re-certification deadline looming, officials say they are not looking to take anyone’s guns.

“To be clear, the State Police will not be confiscating weapons from those permit holders who fail to recertify by January 31st,” says a notice on the NYSP’s re-certification site. “This provision was never intended to be a ‘Gotcha’ for pistol permit holders. It was included in the law that was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor in order to update the accuracy of both state and local records.”

The State Police say they will continue to accept re-certifications throughout 2018 as they work to update the database, but will take note of those submitted late.

While the agency points out that according to state law, failure to re-certify acts as a revocation of a permit — required in New York to possess a pistol or revolver– until they have a chance to process the backlog of re-certifications they are not taking any enforcement action against those “who have unknowingly failed to recertify.”  Many local police and sheriffs are taking the same stand.

Of course, this also illustrates the pure ridiculousness of New York’s gun laws. Imagine having to ask for permission to keep your guns. Not just get permission to buy, but to keep them after you’ve already purchased them with your hard-earned money.

I’m sorry, but this baffles me. It completely flummoxes me how people in the state can manage to put up with this kind of invasive meddling from people who are elected to serve them. I get that many don’t support this, that it’s driven by a handful of heavily liberal regions that dominate the more reasonable parts of the state, but still…

The NYSP’s decision to not enforce the rules, for the time being, makes sense. It’s the most reasonable option in a sea of horrible choices created by an obtrusively tyrannical regime in Albany, NY. However, it should never have come to this. It’s past time we start looking at states like New York and recognize that they are where the battleground really is.