Writing at Human Events, Raquel Okyay suggests that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing a near revolt over the NY SAFE Act, and that more than 90%  of the Empire State’s gun owners will simply ignore the long gun registration requirement in the law. Perhaps just as shocking (to Cuomo’s legion of statists, anyway) is that law enforcement itself does not want to enforce the law.

New Yorkers gauge registration and confiscation of firearms in the aftermath of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s landmark gun control law, the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013.

“The next relevant deadline is April 16, 2014 the date the people are supposed to have their long arms registered,” said Assemblyman William R. Nojay (R. – Pittsford).

The registration system is in place and firearm owners can register today, he said.

Low compliance rates will put the governor in an interesting position especially in an election year, said Nojay. “I think registration rates are going to be less than 10 percent.”

County clerks, district attorneys, county sheriffs and local law enforcement do not want to enforce the S.A.F.E. Act which is now the governor’s law, he said. “They regard it as having nothing to do with law enforcement, it will not prevent crime, it will not prevent tragedy, it is a law of pure politics and they don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Cuomo shows every intention of trying to flex his political muscle to have the SAFE Act enforced, at a time where his allies in New York City are sending out letters to gun owners threatening possible long gun confiscation. But how far is Cuomo willing to go, and what is he willing to risk?

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When I was on Lock and Load Radio with Bill Frady yesterday morning, a caller asked me what I thought it would take to trigger an armed revolt against the government in this nation.

After pointing out the obvious fact that an armed revolt is the least-wanted option for anyone who understands even a little of the horrors of war, I gave him my honest assessment.

I told him that while history doesn’t repeat, it does rhyme, and I suspect that the next revolution will be touched off when a government force (on some level) attempts gun confiscation, commits a heinous act of violence against the citizenry while doing so, and the citizenry unites to fight back.

In my estimation, it will take this three-part formula of tyranny, violence, and repercussion to trigger a revolt, just as it did the first time.

The American Revolutionary War was triggered on April 19, 1775 when Regulars and Marines under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith went to confiscate arms from colonists at Lexington and Concord… but it didn’t happen all at once as they teach in modern history books. When we tell the story of that day in the Appleseed Project, we speak of the “three strikes of the match.”

The “shot heard ’round the world” when British soldiers fired into Captain Parker’s Lexington militia wasn’t the beginning of the revolution, it was just the first atrocity committed by government forces that day. When Regular Captain Laurie’s men fired upon Isaac Davis’s Acton militia at Concord’s North Bridge and were met with withering return fire, even that route didn’t start the war. Regulars who had gone to search for weapons at Barrett’s farm but who did not aim their weapons at the militia were allowed to pass by the militia unmolested over the North Bridge, back to Concord. It wasn’t until the rear guard of the Regulars leaving Concord formed up to fire upon trailing militiamen near Meriam’s Corner that militiamen fired first, and the war was well and truly joined.

The “formula” for a rebellion, if it exists anywhere in these modern disunited states, exists in the state of New York.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is arguably more tyrannical and less sympathetic to the rights of New Yorkers than British General and Governor Thomas Gage was to the citizens of Massachusetts. At least Regulars and Royal Marines were loyal to Gage; the same cannot be said of the rank and file Sheriffs and State Police of New York to Cuomo.

And so it matters immensely when we read:

Cuomo is telling people he will enforce the law, he said. “This governor walks into every room looking for a fight and if he can’t find one he’ll start one.”

“This is a constitutional crisis in the making,” he said. “The question is: Will the governor start pounding the table to force them to be the enforcer.”

There is a difference between an enforcer, and an oppressor. Frankly, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo doesn’t seem smart enough to know the difference, and therein lies the danger to us all.