As the legislative session in Albany winds to a close — and despite being extended an extra 24 hours — a bill to amend New York’s gravity knife law appears to be dead in the state senate.
What’s surprising isn’t so much the bill’s demise in a busy legislative session, but the breakdown of the votes, and the ideological bizarro-world the measure has created in the state legislature.
For the second year in a row, a liberal, downstate Democrat has proposed a bill designed to end the over-criminalization of pocket knives — a subject the Voice has covered extensively. And for the second year in a row, almost all the opposition to the measure has come from the Republican side of the aisle.
In some cases, second-amendment-supporting Republican legislators were actively sponsoring bills to roll back restrictions on firearms even as they helped ensure that New Yorkers — overwhelmingly New Yorkers of color — continued to be arrested for possessing knives.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/will-new-york-republicans-kill-knife-law-reform-for-the-second-year-in-a-row-7274141
