The erosion of freedom in New York is alarming.
New Yorkers are seeing their rights eroded at every turn.
Now state lawmakers are making a terrifying push for more gun control.
During Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, he proclaimed, “America will never be a socialist country.”
Most attendees stood and cheered, while Bernie Sanders and other leftists folded their arms and glowered.
The authoritarians are hard at work to prove Trump wrong.
An unfortunate training ground is New York State.
According to the Cato Institute’s freedom index, New York has ranked dead last among all 50 states for well over a decade.
The Empire State should be rebranded the Regulatory State; laws and regulations increase exponentially, and New Yorkers continue to flee.
Roughly 100,000 New Yorkers leave the state each year, which has partly contributed to a $2.3 billion tax revenue shortfall.
According to Buffalo News, when Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked about taxing the rich as a salve, he responded, “Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. We did that. God forbid the rich leave.”
He’s obviously right.
The top 1% of New Yorkers pay 46% of the state’s tax revenue.
But the Democratic Governor finds himself outflanked on the left by people like former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Even Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who won by running as a moderate, has taken a hard-left turn.
A socialist uprising is taking hold inside the Democratic Party with many New Yorkers leading the way.
They like to use terms like “progressive” and “Democratic socialist” to make the medicine go down easier, but they’re distinctions without a difference; more centralized control is the goal.
One of the first tenets of socialist governance is disarming the public, because it’s difficult to fight government tyranny without weapons.
Just ask the people of Venezuela, the latest failed socialist experiment.
State Senator Kevin Parker introduced a bill that would violate the First and Second Amendments in one fell swoop.
Parker’s bill would bar New Yorkers from being able to purchase a gun if they have a history of “discriminatory content” on social media.
That means someone’s constitutional rights could be violated if the state deems he or she has too many “offensive” tweets, Facebook posts, or Instagram pictures.
This is a shockingly aggressive move by the left.
It’s obvious how such a proposal could be abused.
For example, there’s no clarity on what’s discriminatory and offensive, and who gets to make that distinction.
New York City already has some of the harshest gun laws, so it could become near impossible to legally purchase a firearm under these conditions.
This bill could also set a precedent for denying other constitutional rights based on social media speech.
That is a frightening slippery slope.
A woman in the United Kingdom was recently arrested for misgendering someone online; the police literally showed up at her door, handcuffed her in front of her kids, took her DNA, and confiscated her computer and phone (which have not been returned).
It can happen here if Americans are not vigilant.