The post-Bruen tantrums in the legal landscape have been nothing short of a nightmare for New Yorkers. After New York’s corrupt, discretionary permitting scheme was struck down, the Empire State struck back, passing a lot of laws that made life objectively worse for gun owners in New York. It’s fair to say that New York gun owners are in far worse shape today than they were before the landmark Bruen decision.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who previously had an “A” rating from the NRA,  has bragged about the new infringements at press conferences. Among the new infringements passed by the state include:

• A licensing infringement for the purchase of any semi-auto
• Infringements on the rights of 18-21 year old adults to purchase a semi-auto
• (After the spectacular failure of the red flag law with the Buffalo shooter) Enabling further red flag confiscations to harass ordinary people
• Setting the ground for junk science-based microstamping to ban guns in the future
• Ban on pistol braces
• Eliminating the grandfathering of “large capacity” magazines previously allowed as a “compromise”
• Training burdens and fees to get a carry permit
• Creating a patchwork of government-approved Mass Shooting Zones (“sensitive places”) to entrap and imprison ordinary gun owners
• Banning concealed carry on private property by default
• Creating a minefield of misdemeanors that can result in the revocation of a carry permit
• Ammo background check
• Creating a surveillance state with a license and ammunition sales database
• Creating a surveillance state with social media snitching
• Banning body armor for most people, and requiring body armor sales to be completed in person

The last on the above list is New York’s clownish body armor ban. The ban initially missed the armor worn by the Buffalo shooter, which was ostensibly the motive for banning body armor. A lot of people own body armor. Why they own it is their business. But the state, using the Buffalo shooter as a pretext, banned body armor for everyone.

New York created exceptions to the body armor ban for some professions such as law enforcement and the members of the world’s second oldest profession right next to prostitutes, and that’s politicians.

After banning body armor for ordinary New Yorkers, Gov. Kathy Hochul made a taxpayer-funded junket to Israel. What value can a useless New York politician, presiding over an exploding $36.4 billion budget deficit, a major narcotics crisis, a self-imposed illegal immigration sanctuary crisis, massive capital outflows, and fleeing taxpayers (causing the loss of a congressional seat) add to Israel? 

Was Hochul there to tell former Sayeret Matkal commando Benjamin Netanyahu to make the Gaza Border a “sensitive place” like Times Square?

While in Israel, Hochul was spotted wearing body armor which she didn’t hesitate to ban for the proles she lords over (archived links):

70 people from the town of Kfar Aza were massacred by Hamas.

I was the first U.S. official to visit the once-peaceful community & was horrified by what I saw: the blood-stained ground, stench of death, bombed-out homes.

We must ensure October 7 is a day the world never forgets. pic.twitter.com/81IByyXUhY

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) October 20, 2023

This is the height of hypocrisy. Maybe Hochul should have also suggested to Netanyahu to pass a law banning body armor for Israelis because of the actions of Hamas, like she banned armor for New Yorkers because of the Buffalo shooter?

Hochul’s trip exemplifies what most politicians do: buy votes with other people’s money. Her flight to Israel was as sincere as her previous NRA ‘A’ rating, and was only meant to feign sympathy for Israelis to make sure Jewish voters in New York don’t think of her as siding with Jihadis through complicit silence.

Hochul has already bought the votes of the freedom-hating subset of New Yorkers who think that body armor is something worn by “The Other.” It will take a long time to repeal the ban and the whole slate of new infringements through the judiciary. The anti-Second Amendment hack judges in the Second Circuit which covers New York will drag their feet, hoping that the Supreme Court’s composition changes either naturally or through the brute-force tactic of court packing. They will eventually be brought to heel. The future looks bleak for New Yorkers, but it’s always the darkest before dawn.