Four days after the mass shooting at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo that killed ten people and injured three, Governor Kathy Hochul announced several steps to curb the growing number of extreme acts of violence motivated by racial hatred.
Hochul says the measures will counteract what she calls the intersection of two major crises in New York and the nation: the rise of white supremacist beliefs and too-easy access to military-style weapons.
“The hate has not just infected our society and how people think. It’s literally been weaponized,” Hochul said. “You can’t act on the evil thoughts that have possessed your mind and the hatred that fills your heart if you don’t have access to a weapon.”
Hochul is asking state Attorney General Tish James to investigate social media companies that she says “legitimize” replacement theory. That’s a white supremacist belief that falsely claims immigrants and people of color are replacing white people. She says the companies use algorithms that amplify those messages and encourage more widespread sharing of the posts.
“In 2022, that’s how radicalization is occurring, through the social media echo chamber, and that’s why there are 10 fewer people in Buffalo, New York today,” said Hochul, who added social media companies have to be held accountable for “favoring engagement over public safety.”
In a statement, James says the companies that she will probe include Twitch, which is owned by Amazon and where the alleged Buffalo shooter’s acts were reportedly livestreamed, as well as 4chan, 8chan and Discord, sites that are chiefly used by people with extremist views.
The governor is also strengthening the state’s red flag laws, which allow law enforcement and others to petition a judge to order the confiscation of weapons of someone who is deemed a potential danger to themselves or to others.
The alleged gunman, Payton Gendron, was detained by police a year ago after he said he wanted to commit a murder-suicide at Susquehanna High School in Broome County, where he was a graduating senior.
He was given a mental health evaluation and later released. The red flag law was never invoked.
Hochul signed an executive order that will make it mandatory for State Police to file what’s known as an extreme risk order of protection whenever they encounter someone who is making violent threats.
“(Under) current law, it’s an option to do so,” Hochul said. “And now it will be a requirement.”
Hochul says she’ll ask the Legislature to pass a law to extend that requirement to all law enforcement agencies in the state. The governor says she’ll also work to make sure that law enforcement, school officials, mental health professionals and employers understand the red flag laws more clearly and when they should be invoked.
The governor says she’s continuing to work on a package of bills to close loopholes in the state’s gun control laws, including making illegal a category that’s known as AOWs, or any other weapon. She says these weapons are functionally guns, but are deliberately designed for the purpose of evading gun control laws.
Hochul says she’s also seeking to have all semiautomatic pistols sold in the state be able to microstamp discharged bullets and cartridge cases to make it easier for police to link recovered ammunition to a weapon used in a crime.
State Senate Finance Committee Chair Liz Krueger, a Democrat who supports gun control, says she expects the Democratic-led Legislature to work with the governor to enact laws to close the loopholes and to address the crisis.
“I think the Legislature is absolutely motivated to pass the bills that the governor is proposing that will hopefully start to reverse some of this terrifying activity that is going on,” Krueger said.
Krueger says she finds it “extraordinarily disturbing” to learn that the red flag law was not invoked in the case of the Buffalo shooting suspect.
Hochul also issued an executive order creating a state domestic counterterrorism unit under the Department of Homeland Security, to find out where threats of mass shootings are happening before they occur and to “start connecting the dots.”
