Due Process Denied

What You Need to Know about SAFE Act – Part 1

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Citizen On SAFE Act:  “…this law is just the beginning

of taking many more of our constitutional rights away.

It makes me nervous!!”

Are all citizens entitled to due process?

How would Governor Cuomo answer that question?  How would your state senators and assembly representatives answer that question?  Ask them.

The badly named SAFE Act is unSAFE when it comes to civil liberties.  It denies due process.  This is never mentioned by the governor or elected state officials — purposeful ignorance.  Better to appear to just focus on the 2nd Amendment rather than let people know you’re also going after the 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments.

The SAFE Act (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013) was passed overnight with the leadership of Governor Cuomo and most Republicans and Democrats.

Touted as a “gun control” law, it denies due process to any citizen targeted under the SAFE Act.  They did this by rewriting the state mental health law — can’t have crazies owning guns, right?

Constitutional law professor James Jacobs of New York University confirms: “The individual who is reported [under the SAFE Act] is not entitled to any due process, or even notice, before being stripped of his rights.” 1

It does this by rewriting the state Mental Health Law (section 9.46) in a way that permits the state to easily allege a citizen is “mentally defective,” even based on false reports from hospitals.  To compound the elected leadership’s unethical behavior, the law gives hospitals legal immunity from civil and criminal liability for ‘malpractice’ in terms of false reports.  See the Mental Hygiene Law, Section 94.6 (d) ”The decision of a mental health professional to disclose or not to disclose in accordance with this section, when made reasonably and in good faith, shall not be the basis for any civil or criminal liability of such mental health professional.”

The right to own any firearm can then be denied and all firearms confiscated, with no notice, no hearing, no trial, and no evidence of mental disability.  It is happening now even when a hospital sends a false report to the State Police that someone has been INvoluntarily committed.

For more information, including comments from a citizen whose rights were violated by the SAFE Act, check out our videos:

REFERENCE SOURCES

1 Preventing Dangerous Mentally Ill Individuals from Obtaining and Retaining Guns: New York’s SAFE Act, New York University School of Law, Working Paper No. 15-42, by James B. Jacobs, Warren E. Burger Professor of Law at NYU, and Zoe Fuhr, research fellow at NYU’s Center for Research in Crime and Justice. © 2016, James B. Jacobs and Zoe Fuhr. [See ‘Conclusion,’ p. 98.]  http://its.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/representiveFiles/SSRN-id2671410_4F250263-D7FA-DD1D-36DB8B609A210676.pdf