Cuomo Goes for Guns as a Health Emergency

BUCK: I’ve been telling Clay, this is one of these things where, you know, he lives in Tennessee. He lives in a red state with relative freedom and prosperity, and American flags are not outlawed yet or anything like that. I’m here in New York City, and I gotta deal with all the super-expensive commie lunacy of being in Gotham.

Governor Cuomo is one of the worst governors in America, especially over the course of the pandemic. But we’ve been trying to tell everybody for a long time — I’ve been raising it, many others have been saying — the health emergency framework, they absolutely love this, because it means that now they can say, “Well, it’s not just the powers we had during covid!

“There’s also the powers that we can use for a climate change health emergency or just a climate change emergency or a gun violence emergency.” Well, Governor Cuomo announced today that he is the first governor in the country declaring a gun violence emergency. Let’s play 7.

CUOMO: So here’s my vision. It just came to me. Picture the border. We build a wall!

CROWD: (laughing)

CUOMO: We build a tall, big, a beautiful wall. And we have the wall goes for miles. And we have a little gold leaf up at the top of the wall —

CROWD: (laughing)

CUOMO: — little, gold, shiny leaf. And then we put a big name across the wall. And the name, the name is five letters. You know the name? I can see it. Can you see it? Treat gun violence as it is, which is really a public health emergency.

CROWD: (applause)

CUOMO: That’s what it is, and that’s how we’re going to treat it. So today, first state in the nation, is gonna declare a disaster emergency on gun violence.

CROWD: (applause)

CUOMO: Now, this is a national problem. I get it. But somebody has to step up and somebody has to address it, and the place that you step up and address it is the state of New York, in which we do it comprehensively and honestly and creative, and that’s what today is all about. Because this is a state, when it sees an injustice, we don’t look the other way. We stand up and we fight it, and that’s what we’re gonna do with gun violence.

BUCK: A health emergency. Cuomo also was trying to make some wise guy comments at the beginning

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Buck Sexton, we are playing a clip in your hometown, your home state, New York City, in New York state, where Governor Andrew Cuomo, who, by the way, #MeToo doesn’t seem to apply to. Neither does the standards of basic human decency based on trying not to kill thousands and thousands of people by rolling covid back into the nursing homes, something that smarter governors managed to avoid.

But now there’s a public health emergency expanding the overall reach of government, first in the nation ever to declare, according to Cuomo himself. The problem here is pretty transparent, straightforward, Buck. What we need is more cops on the streets enforcing the laws aggressively to protect people. Whatever emergencies you want to put in place other than bringing in more police are not gonna work.

BUCK: And yet the way they speak about this it’s as though handguns have, you know, sprouted arms and legs and are walking around. They keep referring to “gun violence.” No. People commit violence, often through the use of guns. Nothing that Cuomo’s really talking about here…

I have in front of me the actual talking points from his team today about what it is they’re gonna do. “Deploy a public health approach to gun violence.” Just understand that: A public health approach. They shut down churches for health reasons. They told you he couldn’t leave your home, double mask (when they eventually decided masks were a thing you had to do) over your face, shut down your business. They took totalitarian powers into their hands on that. Now they’re saying “a health emergency” is what guns are all about.