New York’s latest gun control laws are set to take effect tomorrow barring any last-minute injunction from a federal judge, and as we’ll be discussing on this afternoon’s Bearing Arms Cam & Co, they’re shaping up to be a disaster for legal gun owners and law enforcement agencies alike.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and NYC Mayor Eric Adams, however, are casting the new restrictions on the right to carry as a common sense response to the “reprehensible” decision by the Supreme Court to strike down the state’s “may issue” laws for violating the Second Amendment rights of residents. Speaking in Manhattan on Wednesday, the pair bemoaned both the Bruen decision and the right to armed self-defense.

“I never thought from the days of watching cowboy movies as a child, leave your gun at the door become a reality in the state of New York,” Adams said at a Wednesday press conference in Manhattan.

New state laws taking effect Thursday will bar guns from Times Square, bars and a long list of other so-called “sensitive locations” despite the SCOTUS ruling affecting who could apply for concealed weapons permits from the NYPD and county clerks.

“You cannot tell me this is not a feeling of being surreal [with the city] posting these signs – ‘gun-free zones,’” Adams added, referring to warnings that are going up in a newly-defined area surrounding Times Square.

Yeah, it is surreal, and likely unconstitutional as well. But it’s also a situation that Adams and Hochul (along with New York Democrats in the state legislature) brought on themselves when they refused to recognize what the Supreme Court said in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen; the Second Amendment protects a general right to carry a firearm for self-defense in public. New York didn’t have to declare virtually all private property and many public spaces like Times Square “gun-free zones”; politicians chose to do so because they just can’t admit that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamentally important right protected by the Constitution.

“The Supreme Court’s decision has opened an additional river feeding the sea of gun violence. We’re going to continue to use our laws to dam the rivers over and over again,” he added.

Hochul, joining the mayor, said enforcement will remain a “challenge” as the state launches a PR blitz in support of the new rules, which include requiring permit applicants to detail their social media history with officials.

“Of course, we’re going to be enforcing this. We’re not doing anything differently,” she said.

Well, she’s got that right, at least. New York was violating the Second Amendment rights of residents before the Bruen decision was handed down, and they’re not doing anything differently now that the Court has made it clear that we the people have the right to bear arms in self-defense. Arrests for gun possession in New York City are at a 27-year high, according to statistics from the NYPD, but shootings and homicides in the city last month were still higher than they were in July of 2021, with non-fatal shootings up 13.4% and murders up a whopping 34.3%. There are undoubtably tens of thousands of New Yorkers who’d like to carry a gun for self-protection, but the new restrictions on concealed carry are going to make it impossible for them to do so… unless or until the courts step in and put a halt to the enforcement of the state’s latest infringements on the Second Amendment.