NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th July, 2021) The State of New York on Tuesday declared a state of emergency against gun violence similar to the coronavirus pandemic, with Governor Andrew Cuomo also signing into law a bill where firearms makers can be sued for being a public nuisance.
"I want you to understand the extent of the problem. I want you to understand how serious this is," Cuomo said in a live-telecast broadcast as he announced the emergency against rampant and mass shootings in the state that had claimed mostly young lives. "We want to do with gun violence what we did with COVID."
Cuomo also signed before cameras a bill that would reinstate a public nuisance liability against gun manufacturers to make them liable to civil suits for injuries and deaths suffered by both individuals and the state from shootings.
"This is going to be a very big deal,"� Cuomo said, adding that the law was originally scuttled in 2000 by then-President George Bush, who signed an enactment that virtually gave gun manufacturers immunity against any civil suits related to shootings.
Cuomo's action against gun violence comes as current President Joe Biden called for a national crime prevention policy to cut down on shootings.
Cuomo said more people died from shootings in New York over the July 4th weekend than of COVID-19: 51 shooting deaths compared to 13 deaths from the disease.
Gun violence in New York has surged even as other crimes such as rape, robbery and larceny at their lowest since at least 2015, data showed.
Nationally, deaths from shootings are up 18 percent year-over-year in major US cities, and that's after 2020 brought the largest single-year increase ever recorded, according to data.
