Nowhere else in the world is this happening,” said Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx). “Just 10 days separated the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde that took the lives of 31 people. Other bills will strengthen the state’s “red flag” law, which helps remove guns from those who may be a threat to themselves or others, and create a new “Task Force on Social Media and Violent Extremism” within the attorney general’s office to “study and investigate the role of social media companies in promoting and facilitating violent extremism and domestic terrorism online.” “These weapons have made places in our communities like schools, grocery stores, houses of worship and concerts places of carnage.” “Our nation has been brought to a moment of reckoning due to weapons of war that have been too easily accessed by those seeking to kill,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) said. At the moment, licenses and permits are needed only for handguns.
