THE ERROR:
New York's ban on assault weapons may muzzle films and TV shows.
THE REAL MISTAKE:
More transparency before the law was passed could have avoided the situation.
So now New York has to go back and fix its two-month-old gun law because, it turns out, no one thought about the implications for the TV and movie industries. This wouldn't be necessary, of course, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn't displayed contempt for the democratic process by the way he pushed through the law in the first place.
It's time and taxpayer money down the drain, as a consequence of the governor's propensity for rushing through key legislation. We also get, as we've seen with the so-called NY SAFE Act, unwise exercises of government secrecy slipped in without public discussion. And opponents of legislation are given one more reason to criticize it, and one more reason to question whether they live under a truly representative government — a point raised Thursday by thousands of demonstrators in Albany.
To be clear, we wholeheartedly support the SAFE Act's main goals — stemming the proliferation of semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, strengthening background checks, and doing more to keep weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. We congratulate Mr. Cuomo on its passage.
But the way the act was passed, hours after Mr. Cuomo issued a "message of necessity," was wrong. So was a provision in the bill that shields names of gun permit holders from public view — thus preventing meaningful public scrutiny of government's use or abuse of this law.
Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders could have passed the SAFE Act properly, by allowing the typical three-day review period between its printing and passage. That would have given citizens time to share any concerns they might have with the people who represent them.
That's not how Mr. Cuomo sees it. In the case of the SAFE Act, he argues, buyers were snatching up guns at a frenzied pace, so the law had to be passed quickly to stop the rush.
Please. After decades of sales of these weapons, two more days were not going to matter.
More troubling is that the haste to pass the bill reflected a more fundamental philosophy of the governor's: Government, he says, isn't a debating society. In the case of the SAFE Act, gun control had long been talked about and didn't need more discussion. Something simply needed to get done.
We're all for action, but words matter. Especially when those words are the law we all have to live with. We all deserved time to see and consider what those words said.
But as the governor sees it, letting major bills age, as it's called, allows opponents more time to pressure lawmakers and chip away at the support that's often worked out in back-room deals.
"You take the vote when you have the votes," says Mr. Cuomo.
That's both a truncated view of the legislative process and a cynical view of representative government.
Yes, democracy can be messy. But it sure beats the alternatives.
So by all means, Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers, go back and fix the bill. Make New York safe once again for action heroes and TV cops and bad guys to flash otherwise illegal weapons. But while you're at it, put the transparency back in state government that the SAFE Act took away. Gun permits should be public records, except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances.
And let this be a reminder of the adage, "haste makes waste." A waste of time, and a waste of public trust.