“I don’t wish to lose any extra folks to Palm Seashore,” Gov. Hochul mentioned again in June. “We’ve misplaced sufficient.”
Hochul was speaking taxes then, however the a whole lot of hundreds of New Yorkers who instructed pollsters final month they are going to “positively” pack up and depart the town if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor have loads of different causes to go.
Simply ask Charles Foehner, the 67-year-old retired Queens doorman who in Could 2023 defended himself with deadly pressure from an assailant with 15 prior arrests and a historical past of psychological sickness.
Foehner survived the middle-of-the-night altercation due to his trusty revolver in what everybody accepts is a case of self-defense.
Queens District Lawyer Melinda Katz wasn’t by way of with Foehner, nonetheless.
Though she couldn’t prosecute him for resisting his assailant, the mere truth Foehner bore firearms in New York uncovered him to prison fees severe sufficient to land him in jail for as much as 25 years.
Evaluate that draconian consequence with actuality in my state, Florida, the place firearms could be carried brazenly and with out a allow and crime is at an all-time low.
Solely a 12 months earlier than Foehner’s incident, the Supreme Courtroom struck down New York’s century-old gun-control regulation, ruling it unconstitutional for requiring “correct trigger” for a gun license and mandating the state undertake a brand new regulation in step with current federal gun-control rules.
That regulation, the Hid Carry Enchancment Act, has itself proved so restrictive that it’s confronted a number of federal-court challenges.
Together with his again to the wall and dealing with severe monetary issue — and as loads of violent criminals with arm-long rap sheets freely stroll the streets — Foehner took a plea cut price of 4 years in jail.
Choose Toni Cimino rejected Katz’s hateful demand that Foehner report for incarceration earlier than the vacations, however prevailing authorized practices will doubtless not enable the decide to scale back or droop the jail time period at Foehner’s formal sentencing listening to Jan. 14.
Except Gov. Hochul acts shortly and grants clemency, Foehner’s subsequent 4 Thanksgivings and Christmases will probably be spent behind bars, successfully as a political prisoner of a capricious anarcho-tyranny that prizes criminals over residents.
To any sane individual, Foehner is a hero.
Exercising his constitutional proper to bear arms, a difficulty with which the state has noticeably struggled, he employed them in what even Katz seems to confess was a authorized act of self-defense.
As a senior citizen with no prior prison file, Foehner has by no means posed any danger to society and poses no danger to it now.
The truth is, the other is true — society proved to be a danger to him, and he stands to endure years in jail at a complicated age as its sufferer.
As Foehner’s legal professional Thomas Kenniff, who efficiently defended subway hero Daniel Penny in Manhattan final 12 months, mentioned after the plea-bargain listening to, his consumer deserves a plaque, not a jail sentence.
“For too lengthy our political leaders have coddled violent criminals on the expense of harmless New Yorkers,” Kenniff wrote me. “We now have witnessed self-defense placed on trial, Good Samaritans mercilessly prosecuted for shielding others, and the Second Modification rights of law-abiding New Yorkers, like Charlie Foehner, frequently trampled.”
Gun-control-loving Dems would possibly argue sending a retirement-age Queens resident to the slammer on what quantities to a vindictive technicality could be a deterrent.
However of their crime-ridden metropolis, the one factor it would deter is trustworthy folks with the chutzpah to defend themselves and different New Yorkers.
Even when Hochul agrees with this flawed, self-loathing leftist argument, she ought to rightly fear about how a lot resentment outraged New Yorkers will present towards her on the polls subsequent November, when she is up for re-election.
A Manhattan Institute survey launched in late October — earlier than Foehner’s plea cut price — already confirmed Hochul shedding to upstate Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who hadn’t but even declared her candidacy. A Siena ballot taken simply earlier than Foehner’s listening to discovered solely 42% of New Yorkers would give Hochul one other time period in workplace, with 48% preferring another person.
Permitting self-defending senior residents to languish in jail for no good cause gained’t assist her already-troubled case earlier than a hostile citizens.
“As we head right into a pivotal election 12 months,” Kenniff continued, “I encourage frequent sense New Yorkers of all political persuasions to name upon Governor Hochul to train her clemency energy to spare Mr. Foehner from the brutality of an totally pointless state jail sentence.”
If Hochul doesn’t act, she might quickly discover herself a failed former governor. And naturally, her nightmare of extra New Yorkers relocating to the Sunshine State would possibly simply come true.
Paul du Quenoy is Palm Seashore Freedom Institute president.
