Gun Safety Advocates Urge Passage of Bill to Keep DIY Machine Guns Out of New York Communities 

ALBANY, N.Y. – Yesterday, hundreds of gun safety advocates with the New York chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, both part of Everytown for Gun Safety’s grassroots network, held a rally at the state capitol building in order to urge their lawmakers to further strengthen the state’s gun safety laws and become the first state to prohibit the future sale of semi-automatic pistols that are easily converted into DIY machine guns. Advocates and gun violence survivors were joined by state lawmakers for a rally about the importance of action on gun safety in this year’s legislative session. 

“We can’t rest on our laurels in the hopes that our gun safety laws are good enough to protect us from future tragedy, especially as the gun industry continues to innovate at our communities’ expense,” said Sheffali Welch, a volunteer with the New York chapter of Moms Demand Action. “Our New York lawmakers need to continue leading and stepping up where the federal government won’t to keep us safe. We need to enact these gun safety measures and enact them now.” 

“We need our lawmakers to pass a lifesaving measure that will prohibit the firearm industry from selling pistols that are compatible with so-called Glock switches and can be configured into machine guns in minutes,” said Patricia Block-Sheehan, a student leader with the Staten Island Academy Students Demand Action chapter. “While Glock and other firearm manufacturers do not make the switches themselves, the firearm industry has known about this problem but failed to fix it. So it’s up to us, and our lawmakers, to demand that they make a change.” 

Volunteers with Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action are urging their New York lawmakers to continue taking action on gun safety this legislative session and continue fighting for gun violence prevention policies at the state level, especially when the Trump Administration has refused to do so at the federal level. For decades, New York has had some of the strongest gun safety laws, and this has led to lower rates of gun violence. Earlier this month, Governor Hochul announced that shootings have dropped 53% compared to three years ago.

Measures that gun safety advocates spoke in support of include: 

• S.399 (Sen. Zellnor Myrie) / A.199 (Assemblymember Michaelle Solages), a measure to prohibit the future sale to civilians of any semi-automatic pistols that can easily be converted into DIY machine guns simply by the installation of a Glock switch. For decades, Glock and other manufacturers using the same design have known that their firearms are especially susceptible to being quickly and easily converted into illegal machine guns – with just a screwdriver and a $25 switch – and refused to do anything about it. Once a pistol is equipped with a Glock switch, it is capable of firing at a rate of 1,200 rounds per minute, making the pistol much deadlier. 

• S.3385 (/Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal) / A.1962-A (Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson), a measure to simplify and strengthen New York’s firearm storage law by requiring all gun owners to securely store their firearms when not in use. Research shows that an effective way to prevent children from accessing firearms, and preventing youth firearm suicide, unintentional shootings, or school shootings, is making sure all guns are stored unloaded, locked, and separate from ammunition. 

Advocates also continued to advocate for their push for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention (OGVP) to be expanded and made permanent this year, as outlined in S.1289, Sen. Myrie / A.2084, Assemblymember Chandler-Waterman. A strong OGVP will help ensure that New York’s gun violence prevention efforts are coordinated, centralized, and effective. Now that the federal OGVP has been shuttered under the Trump Administration, a strong OGVP in New York is more important than ever. 

In an average year, 984 people die by guns in New York, and another 2,841 are wounded. New York has the 5th-lowest rate of gun deaths in the US. Gun deaths and injuries cost New York $11.4 billion each year, of which $301.2 million is paid by taxpayers. More information about gun violence in New York can be found here.