CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY BLASTS N.Y. GOVERNOR CUOMO FOR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GUN OWNERS

 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

WEBSTER, N.Y. -(Ammoland.com)-
Civil rights attorney Paloma A. Capanna today blasted Governor Cuomo
for discriminating against law-abiding gun owners through excessive
reporting of patients to the FBI.
The statement was made
immediately following the FBI release of the 2016 year-end statistics of
reports voluntarily made by states to the FBI for inclusion in the
“National Instant Criminal Background Check System” (“NICS”), a database
of persons disqualified from firearms ownership, use, or possession in
all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Capanna represents plaintiffs in federal, state, and
local courts, fighting against systematic false reporting of
“involuntary commitment” and additional reporting under the “SAFE Act.”

Among
the decisions currently pending are the records, if any, of more than
2,000 individuals who submitted Freedom of Information Requests to the
NYS Police for any records it may be harboring against them from medical
providers.
Capanna previously won the case of Robinson vs. Cuomo
for the release of the numbers of firearms registered under the “assault
weapons ban,” including an award of attorney’s fees and costs against
the state.
Oddly, the ATF annual report also shows that in eight
other disqualifying categories, Governor Cuomo has not reported a single
person to the FBI. The ATF report shows zero (“0”) reported felony
convictions, zero persons under indictment, zero fugitives from justice,
zero illegal aliens, zero who have renounced their U.S. citizenship,
and zero who have committed a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
State
reporting of disqualified persons to the FBI is voluntary. Since 2009,
New York has received more than $13 million in federal funding under the
“NICS Act Record Improvement Program,” more than any other
participating state.

New York receives incentive money to report
individuals as “involuntarily committed” and as having a restraining
order issued against them. These are the only two categories of federal
disqualification for which New York reports individuals to the FBI to
include in the NICS database.

Paloma A. Capanna, AttorneyIn
addition, the NYS Police maintain a second, secret database on New
Yorkers under Mental Hygiene Law §9.46. It is estimated that more than
200,000 reports have been made into that database, or, a total of more
than 700,000 records between the two tracks of reporting.
This
would mean that 3.7 percent or 1 out of 27 New Yorkers are housed in the
NYS Police database under “mental health” allegations. The NYS Police
have previously stated that they conduct no investigation into the
veracity of the allegations.

Both types of reports originate from
a medical provider. No notification is required to be given to the
patient of the report being made, nor is the report required to be part
of the patient’s medical record.

Neither is patient consent
obtained for the transmission of their medical information to law
enforcement, including any diagnosis and provider narrative.
Legislation
called the “Civil Rights Restoration Act” is currently being discussed
with Democratic and Republican Members of the State Legislature,
according to Capanna.