New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Democrat-dominated state legislature there have passed a law mandating that an estimated one million “assault rifles” must be registered with the police by April 15, 2014. The law was passed in the temporary hysteria…
…over the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings (and of course Democrats “never want a serious crisis to go to waste“). For those who fail to register their “assault rifles,” the new state law can put them in prison for up to one year…and of course their “assault rifles”—and probably all their other firearms—would be permanently confiscated. The law is in apparent violation of New York’s state “bill of rights,” which provides that “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed,” but…whatever. It is being met with an organized refusal-to-comply movement, which may presage a much larger application of the Molon Labe principle in America (federal registration laws haven’t been passed yet, but in Washington, DC “the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013” has been presented and is the subject of current hearings).
Before things get out of hand in New York state—and as a Free State Project participant in New Hampshire—I have an elegant solution for the million or more “assault rifle” owners threatened by the New York law: Rather than become lawbreakers, why not move over to your nearby neighbor, the Live Free or Die state of New Hampshire? The weather’s not all that different—especially for New York’s upstate residents—New Hampshire is one of the more gun-friendly states in the U.S., and it has neither a state income tax nor a statewide sales tax.
However, for all you 2nd Amendment supporters in New York and elsewhere, please keep one thing in mind: Your support for the inalienable right to self-defense must be accompanied by equally strong support for other inalienable rights. Taken all together, those rights reflect the Free State Project’s credo that “government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.”
So think about it! Second Amendment supporters everywhere could do a lot worse than moving to the Live Free or Die State of New Hampshire! Welcome to you all!