Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul and Attorney General James Announce Major Expansion in Red Flag Law Usage to Protect New Yorkers from Gun Violence

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced a major expansion in usage of New York State's Red Flag Law to further protect New Yorkers from gun violence. Following an executive order and legislation signed by Governor Hochul to strengthen implementation of the law, courts across the State have issued 1,908 Extreme Risk Protection Orders, more than doubling the number of orders issued since the law became effective on August 25, 2019. Governor Hochul and Attorney General James also announced a $4.6 million increase to the Attorney General's FY23 budget to further support the New York State Police's efforts to obtain Extreme Risk Protection Orders when individuals pose a danger to themselves or others.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Thank you for joining us. Great to be back in the illustrious Red Room. Haven't been here as much as we will be starting in January once again when the cycle begins. But I'm really proud to be able to stand here with some outstanding public servants, and let me talk about our Attorney General, Tish James, who really has embraced the responsibility, our shared responsibility to do whatever we can to protect the citizens of our state. So, we'll be talking about what she's going to be announcing momentarily, but I want to thank her for what has really become a genuine, true partnership. And that's how you get the results that have not always happened in the past.

Also, Acting Superintendent Steve Nigrelli, New York State Police, you'll be hearing from him on how we're addressing the issue of implementing our new tightened up, stricter, better red flag laws. And I've known Steve a long time, the face of fighting crime in Western New York, and there's been a real difference in places like Western New York where just data like shootings and murders are down 35 percent in one year. That's a Western New York story. It's also a New York State story. We're approaching those numbers in the next few months, we believe. So, County Executive Dan McCoy has joined us as well. Dan McCoy over here. I'm looking over in the wrong direction - not that you guys look alike. Dan McCoy, good to see you again. I'm just looking over this. Kathy Sheehan, our Mayor. Thank you. Great to see you in my adopted hometown here. Pat Fahy, our Assemblymember, and Assemblymember John McDonald. So, thank you for joining us as well.

This is all about progress we're making in the fight to eradicate gun violence. And this is really a fight across our nation, and one that is calling all leaders to truly step up as we have been since I made this one of our top priorities becoming Governor. It's been my priority. It's not a new development, it's something we focused on with great intensity, really, especially in the early months of 2022 when we started seeing trends that were disturbing across this entire country. And I knew we needed to take strong steps to make sure that we've done everything humanly in our power to protect the citizens of the state. So it is, again, is a nationwide gun violence, and sociologists someday will figure this out. But when you look at the fact that even February of 2020, just before the pandemic, if you had done a survey of concerns of New Yorkers and Americans for that matter, I don't know that crime would've been in the top 2, 3, 4, 5 even. So, something happened during this pandemic and across the country, I don't have my handle on how to explain it, but the human condition and people so disconnected from support systems or whatever the motivation is, and I don't know that right now, and I don't need to know. All I know is that we have seen an increase in crime. We have seen an increase in crime across this country. So, that's why back in January I said, "Let's do this - something that no one has ever done before in the entire country."

And that is to create a task force, a team of not just New York partners in fighting crime. All across the country, there are others who are in this fight with us, so we found nine states. Nine contiguous states as well as NYPD, Boston PD, who meet with us regularly to literally track the guns that are coming in from other states. And you know why I know they're coming in from other states? Because we don't make them here. They clearly head across a state line in order to be in our streets or owned by someone here. So, that is the dynamic that has gone not unnoticed by us. It's been a laser-focus of our attention working with NYPD, but also our state police have really stepped up as well. So, first-in-the-nation task force on legal guns launched last January. As a result, and the numbers were 7,000, last I talked about were now up to 8,000. 8,000 illegal guns off the streets, you know, NYPD, our numbers together, what we've done has been extraordinary. We've also decided we have to give more money to law enforcement. They have more needs, they have more demands on their time, we need to support them. So, we literally tripled the amount of money going to law enforcement in our budget that I unveiled last January - an historic $227 million in gun violence programs as well.

And also tripled all the support for our communities, you know, community-based initiatives that we do know work. Also in our budget, we've expanded bail eligibility for gun crimes, targeted bail changes. Did you actually know that? You probably didn't know that. We made bail changes. Bail reform changes were made in the last budget, especially expanding bail eligibility for gun crimes. And it also made it easier to prosecute gun trafficking. Now that's just a broad overview. I have a lot of details if you care to cover the 10 pages we have of everything we've done on fighting crime. But the bottom line is, New Yorkers want to know this: Are you focused on this? Are you taking steps? Are you making a difference? And the answer is yes. We have to be nimble. We have to be responsive to whatever circumstances arise. When we did our budget, we could not have foreseen that on May 14th, I'd be called back to my hometown of Buffalo in the aftermath of a slaughter that occurred in a grocery store 10 minutes from where my husband and I live — the Tops grocery store in East Buffalo.

And I was back there again Friday comforting families, sharing tears, trying to give them hope as we talked about a new memorial in the names of those victims so what they went through will never ever be forgotten and a reminder that we do rise up. And the resilience of those people was extraordinary. The courage they have to show up day after day. So, I will never forget them. And our hearts were crushed, and we are still in mourning, but we said, "We have to take action. We have to take action immediately." I signed into law in the aftermath of that tragedy, a nation-leading package that made us have the toughest gun laws in America. And also, doing simple things that could not happen before, were not happening before, and truly should happen at the national level. And that is simply saying that teenagers - 18- and 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds as well - should not be able to purchase a military grade assault weapon in a store in New York State. So, we changed the law to raise the age for permits for semi-automatic weapons, enhanced reporting by law enforcement - we don't operate in a vacuum. There are trends where there's guns shared, there's gang activity, and we have to stop the solmization — if that's such a word — that occurs in law enforcement. It's not new. It's historic. But we have to break that down and share more data with state and federal databases, and that's what we started doing as well.

Also, the ability to buy large capacity magazines or even body armor - think back to that Tops grocery store. The man in the store charged with protecting the people, a security guard, he had a vest on. But the vest that was worn by the 18-year-old white supremacist murderer was even stronger. Why was he able to purchase that instead of being stopped by that security guard doing his job? We'll always question. But going forward, going forward, those types of body armor are now - for civilians — is now banned. We established a social media task force and I thank our Attorney General, again for just releasing her report. We said, "What can we do?" Because there is a radicalization that does go on on social media platforms, on the dark web. It's true. This is exactly where this particular killer was radicalized in his home - sharing data, showing images of horrific massacres in an effort to inspire others to do the same. So, I thank the Attorney General for leaning into this and doing what you need to do to just identify what's going on here and how we can take steps to protect our citizens.

But one thing I want to talk about here today, in addition to all this, we strengthened our red flag laws. What are these laws? These laws are intended to keep deadly weapons away from people who are a threat to themselves or to others. It's that simple. And now we've made it easier to obtain a search warrant and temporarily seize dangerous weapons from someone who's deemed an extreme risk. I would say when, again, hearkening back to the Buffalo shooter example, the red flag laws we had at that time weren't enough. They just weren't enough. This teenager had made threats of violence in the past and never should have been able to buy a gun. If this had been tracked down, if the red flag laws had been implemented, he would not have been able to literally walk into a gun shop in his home area, purchase a gun as an 18-year-old, go over to Pennsylvania, acquire a high-capacity magazine, and create a lethal weapon of mass destruction, which is exactly what he did. He fell through the cracks of the system under our preexisting red flag law. He evaded a law that was designed to stop people just like him.

So now what do we do? We immediately stepped up and I signed an executive order that required our state police to file, not optional, but require our state police to file for an extreme risk order protection if they believe someone could fit that category, be a threat to themselves or to others. And on June 6th, I signed a bill into law to codify that, not just for state police, but for all law enforcement in the State of New York, and we spent to cover law enforcement as well as doctors, mental health providers, and even teachers, the people who could see the signs before a tragedy occurs.

And now we're seeing the results. The number of orders issued as a result of our action has grown exponentially, so I just wanted to let everyone know that since, in the months since the executive order and the legislation, the state has now issued nearly 2000 orders of protection. That's not over years. That's not even a single year. That's since May and June - the number of orders of protection that have been issued. It's more than doubled since the effective date of the original law. It went back in 2019, and on average, we're issuing over 400 a month compared to 45 a month in the past.

Again, this is a small snapshot in time because we've made such a dramatic difference in almost no time at all, and what's most fascinating to me in each case, in each one of these cases, that's perhaps a crime or an act of violence that didn't occur, something that was prevented. And that's the very reason I took those steps. It's undeniable progress in just four months, and it means our red flag laws are working. And just think about last week when I signed a package of bills to protect victims of survivors of domestic violence. Something that you've heard me talk about, you know, it was an issue in my own mother's family. And what we said was, because so many people lose their lives in a domestic or partner relationship, that guns have played a major role in the hands of abusers.

So, we made sure that in those cases, a defendant's possession of a firearm can be determined by a judge when you're issuing that order of protection. And we said, "Well, why doesn't the judge know whether or not someone has these guns in their homes since you've now decided they need to be protected?" Well, the answer was they weren't required to ask. Those are the kind of issues. We said, "Now they'll be asking. Let's just change that with a simple act." So, if they do own a gun and a judge determined that possession could be dangerous for an individual, we're just making sure that gun is seized like the rest of our gun laws, like the rest of our red flag laws. These are just common-sense ways to protect New Yorkers. And I want to thank law enforcement throughout the state. They have had to step up. They've had to be trained. They've had to rethink their mission. But these times call for that, and I want to say this: Our red flag laws rely upon being used in our communities, identifying potential risk and taking necessary action.

And in the past, you know, obviously there's legal challenges. Some of these cases have been dismissed, even though there might be good cause, but they're dismissed because there's not been proper legal representation. So, the police officer shows up without a lawyer on his side making the case. So fortunately, again, as you find problems, you find the solution. We have an attorney general who agreed to step up and was eager to solve this problem with us. It was just a matter of resources. How do we have more attorneys available to go to court to ensure that these applications are successful instead of being dismissed?

So, we allocated $4.6 million to the Attorney General's Office to hire the staff, the attorneys she needs to go to court with our State Police in these court proceedings and make sure that they are able to support the request for an Extreme Risk Order of Protection. But that's not all we're doing to help law enforcement. In August, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety to provide training. Again, training is critical. Law enforcement people have been on the job for a long time. They're not as familiar with what the tools are that are available for them to protect the citizens, and so it's a matter of training. Over 800 people participated in this training, and 2,400 people watched online. I think that's incredible to get more people understanding the power of these red flag laws to prevent tragedies from happening. Also, the Municipal Police Training Council is working on a model policy for all law enforcement that'll be adopted shortly.

So, our goal is this: Train law enforcement, make teachers and medical professionals be aware of the tools that are right there, and it's called, "The Red Flag." This is how we keep guns out of the hands of people who could do harm to others. Ending gun violence is one of my very top priorities. I have to find all the areas where the system has not worked before successfully. And I'll continue to be laser-focused on this as we go forth, as we have been since my first days in office. And as long as I'm Governor, New York State will continue to be at the forefront of this fight. And so, we look back and think about the inspiration for some of these changes. The tragedy of the mass shooting in Buffalo, or even the Supreme Court's attack on our ability to protect citizens from everyone having a concealed carry weapon wherever they go, a law that was on the books for 108 years allowing a Governor to protect her citizens from individuals randomly carrying guns wherever they choose without any limitation. The only thing that changed was not the law, not our state. It was a Supreme Court that changed. That's it. That's it. And so, we're still in court on some of those issues. There's no surprise there since every time there's any gun legislation issued, probably in the country but certainly in New York, there's litigation, but I promise to double down on common sense solutions that will really make a difference. We know there's more work to do, but we have the team in place, the desire and the knowledge that the steps we take today can save lives tomorrow. And with that, let me introduce our great Attorney General, Tish James, to make sure that she can talk about how she can continue her fierce fight to protect New York families throughout this entire state.