Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Unveils New Gun Seizure and Crime Data Showing Progress in Combating Gun Violence Epidemic

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled new data on gun seizures, gun-tracing investigations, and gun-related crime that indicates New York State's exhaustive efforts and strategic investments to combat the gun violence epidemic are beginning to show signs of progress. The data includes a substantial year-over-year increase in State Police gun and ghost gun seizures—both coinciding with the formation of the Interstate Task Force on Illegal Guns. The Governor also highlighted the first discernible drop in New York City gun crime in more than two years—with a 12 percent reduction in shooting incidents over the last year. Outside of New York City, 20 jurisdictions participating in the State's Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) initiative have experienced a nearly seven percent drop in shooting incidents compared with last year.

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

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickrpage.

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

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. I'm joined by Superintendent of the New York state Police, Kevin Bruen and also Rensselaer County District Attorney, Mary Pat Donnelly, who last time we were together was to do a packing up of supplies for people going to Ukraine. You've been very involved in your community beyond your important work to protect the citizens of your county.

Sorry for the delay, but I just participated in a meeting that is the results of us bringing together representatives from states such as Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New York State, as well as the NYPD, and I believe the Boston police department. Last January, I said, we have to do something about the unwillingness of the guns coming from other states into our streets and resulting in a lot of gun violence and gun deaths.

I said, we have to figure out a way to start working together. The criminals don't care about geographic boundaries, and therefore I don't either when it comes to stopping crimes. Crime prevention is what we're focused on, so I brought together these other states. I thank the leaders of the states, the governors for having their leadership in the law enforcement area.

As well as ATF and others who are part of an organic system right here where we get together, for the first time ever shared data, and as a result of that, we're making real progress in terms of doing exactly what I want to do. My number one priority is as the governor is to keep New Yorkers safe. Period, end, full stop.

I have to keep New Yorkers safe, so when I launched this task force, I said, we have to get together and have collaborations. We can start having gun seizures, go up and gun crimes, go down. And in that time, six months I asked for our report, we've nearly doubled the number of gun seizures compared to the prior year. Over 662 guns have been seized already in 98 percent increase compared to this time last year. Our ghostgun seizures have gone up 1,800 percent since 2018. That's a 212 percent increase since 2020.

So we are focused on the ghost guns as well, as well as my partner in government Attorney General, Tish James and Mayor Adams and others across the state were working together on these. So last year we seized over 360 ghost guns, state police did 65. And also what's really important to me, we have made investigative referrals to over 22 states. This level of cooperation never existed before. Before we brought people together, put them in the room together, say we are all on the same team. It's us against them. We have to work tireless to find ways to use the data when we find out about traffic in our state, share it to other states and have them share information with us. And that's why we're making a real difference.

And the number of shooting incidences are down. Shooters and victims are both down. Shootings are down 12 percent in New York City, down 7 percent in the rest of the state. It may not feel like it, but I'm watching the data and at some point we're going to get back to the pre-pandemic numbers that we're all striving for.

So these are the first notable declines. We've seen in the spikes of gun violence since May of 2020. Sowe are turning the corner, we're going full steam ahead to make sure that we continue our efforts to make sure we keep New Yorkers safe. That's undeniable progress. It's proof that what we're doing here in New York is working. And we know that overall gun reforms, gun safety legislation, it works. New York State deaths due to injury from firearms is about five per a hundred thousand.

What's the context of that? In other states that have far fewer restrictions with respect to who can carry a gun and who can purchase them and the use of them. In Mississippi, a state with minimal restrictions, they have 28.6 percent - I'm sorry, 28.6 deaths per a hundred thousand. I just wanted you to hear that context. Again, New York State, five deaths per a hundred thousand population versus a place like Mississippi and others.

We've analyzed other states that have far fewer restrictions on guns and their numbers of deaths per a hundred thousand are much higher, but it's not enough to have the toughest gun laws in the nation. We're always having to double down and find more solutions to make a difference.

And that's why we looked at opportunities for funding. Our budget just enacted a few months ago, $227 million for gun violence prevention programs. And we had to continue strengthening our laws.

I will get back once again and talk about what happened in Buffalo. We'll never forget what happened in Buffalo. That's my hometown. And I immediately called on the Legislature after that tragedy struck and got weapons, working hard to get weapons off the streets. We signed a nation-leading comprehensive legislative package. You know the details, we've talked about them, but last week, as we continue to do everything we can here in the State of New York. If I sound a little frustrated, I am.

We're doing what we can to get the guns out of the hands of criminals, making sure that you have to be older to buy an AR-15, that you cannot, that we really increased the use of our red flag laws. And I thank the State Police for being so aggressive in their approach in making sure that we protect citizens, but then you have the Supreme Court of the United States of America that think that they have more power than a governor does when it comes to protecting the citizens of our state.

So they added fuel to the fire. You know, we've had fires raging for a long time in terms of our desire to just tamper things down, get the guns out of the hands of criminals, try to have some gun safety laws that make sense. And all of a sudden, we have no longer have them. They removed our limitations on who can carry concealed weapons in our state.

So while we're at a time of national reckoning, everybody's focused on this after Uvalde, after Buffalo, after the day-to-day scourge of gun violence in our streets, we have the Supreme Court of the United States of America tells us that we now have to repeal, repeal a law that's been on the books for over 100 years back when probably Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States.

That's how long the law was there. And now they're trying to, they're totally out of touch with what we want for our state. And we want safer streets, not more guns on our streets. And what they in their vision of a New York would be to allow guns on subways, people carrying them to work, carrying them to schools, carrying them to daycare centers, carry them to crowded venues like Times Square bar, imagine someone's talking to your girlfriend. You're not real happy about it. And you have a gun and you have a temper and that's what happens.

So we are facing a wave of concealed weapons that we're going to be facing a wave of concealed weapons in our parks, our subways, gathering places. And so therefore, when this decision came down just one week ago, we said, we're going to move quickly. Next Thursday, I said, we're going to get together. That day has arrived tomorrow. The Legislature will be acting upon legislation that we're putting forth. And my team is reviewing all of our options. We're going to make sure we have the strongest protections possible.

And that's why I appreciate the support of Carl Heastie, our Speaker Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins in working with us for legislation that we believe is going to make sense and continue to protect the citizens. That's why we're having this extraordinary session. That's what it's actually called, an extraordinary session, because we have to make sure that we make these changes and I want them done now.

Let me talk about some of the areas we're going to be expanding restrictions. Sensitive Locations. What does that mean? Well, we're going to help everybody now. We're going to help define them. Federal, state, local government buildings, health and medical facilities, places where children gather, daycares, parks, zoos, playgrounds, public transportation, subways buses, polling places, educational institutions, and making sure that we have no open carry policy as a developed position for private businesses. Let me explain what that means.

The presumption, the State of New York after we sign this bill into law, will be the presumption is that private property owners will not want to have concealed carry weapons on their premises, but should they decide they do?

They would actually firmly put a sign in their window, a bar, a restaurant gathering place. Concealed carry weapons welcome here. Otherwise, the presumption will be in the State of New York, that they're not. We're going to protect the rights of private property owners allow them to not have to be subjected to someone walking into their workplace or a bar, restaurant with a concealed weapon. And therefore, we're going to take that very strong step, but we believe that is sustainable. And that's what the law is going to be once we get this through tomorrow. So, we're standing up for the rights of business owners, standing up for their right to be able to protect their premises, and their patrons, and their fellow workers, and their employees. And that's what we're going to do.

We're also strengthening the list of disqualifying criteria. So you can't get a permit if you have a history of dangerous behavior. We're also going to be updating our safe storage laws. So we're going to have more people out there who legally would be able to carry weapons. Well guess what? 25 percent of gun crimes are committed with stolen guns. Where can they steal them out of? They can steal them out of your vehicle. So we're adding a vehicle requirement to our safe storage laws. So you have to have them locked up when you're traveling. And right now, if you have children in your home under the age of 16, you have to have safe storage. And I would say given the concern we have with the increase in suicides with teenagers, we're going to raise that number to 18. So guns in a household with 18 year olds or younger will have to now be locked up.

We're also going to improve our information sharing for state police background checks and bolster training. So there's in-person fire range training. We're working out the details, over 15 hours will be required of in-person training to be able to receive a concealed carry permit. And this is going to be significant. We're going to require a background check for all purchases of ammunition for guns that need a permit. You'll have to show that permit at the time of purchase.

And also be standing up the database and I'll be talking about that more tomorrow, the ammunition database that is long overdue. And again, as I mentioned, we'll be talking about that. I have a plan to explain to you how that even happened. But we don't want to lose the protections of our concealed carry laws. So we're doing everything we can to continue protecting New Yorkers. This has been a fight for my life for a long time. I was a young staffer for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. When we wanted to ban what they called at the time, "cop killer bullets," armor piercing bullets, and there was such resistance to do something that seemed like such common sense to all of us, that you would not want a bullet that could take the life of a law enforcement officer whose sworn duty is to keep others alive. So I have been on these battles for a long time. I see this as an extension of that work. There's more to do, this is a nationwide crisis. Too many lives are being lost here in New York, but I will not rest as the Governor of this state, until we've done everything in our power to end this gun epidemic once and for all, here in the State of New York, because we're not going backwards, we're going forward.

And I want to say if six Supreme Court Justices want to take us backwards, we have a legislature full of duly elected representatives who actually speak for the people of this state and want to protect a law that's been on the books for over 100 years. And so we all collectively, the legislature, myself and all others, our law enforcement individuals, I just spoke to a few minutes ago. They all want us to make sure we have smart, sensible gun safety legislation. So I appreciate the desire and the interest of our legislature to get this done again, coming in. They're starting to arrive now, they're meeting, and I hope to have a pen in my hand tomorrow, or very early hours of Friday morning. I'll stay as long as it takes. I'm not going anywhere. So we'll get it done. And I want the people of New York to know that we take this deadly seriously. The Supreme Court decision was a setback for us, but I would call it a temporary setback, because we are going to marshal the resources, the intellect, we've been talking to leaders in this industry, and academics, and people in think tanks to find out what we can do legally, constitutionally, to make sure that we do not surrender my right as Governor, or our rights as New Yorkers to protect ourselves from gun violence.

And I do want to give a shout out to Marcos Soler, the Deputy Secretary of Public Safety, who's been on speed-dial with me nonstop over this. I appreciate his involvement with our gun interdiction taskforce that I just pulled him out, Marcos, but we've been having constant conversations about finding the right answer to make sure that this Supreme Court decision does not have the effect of making New Yorkers less safe than they are right now.