Aiming for safety: Gov. Hochul and the Legislature do some smart tightening of New York’s gun laws

For all the sturm und drang over New York’s SAFE Act in 2013, which then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo heralded and critics blasted as the strictest gun law in America, it remained legal here for a radicalized white supremacist 18-year-old who had threatened to shoot up his school to walk into a gun store and buy a Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle, which he then used to murder 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket.

That loophole large enough to fit countless caskets through will close after the Legislature and Gov. Hochul advanced a number of wise fixes. It remains to be seen which will survive an impending Supreme Court ruling that could well knock down the state’s core gun permitting law, but after the Tops Friendly Market massacre, there was no excuse not to act.

Semiautomatic rifles will now require a gun license just as handguns do, which means prospective buyers will have to be 21, have a legally recognized reason for a firearm, and meet other requirements. Duh. Body armor like what aided the teenage killer’s shooting spree will be barred for purchase by most of the general public. Red flag laws that have been criminally underutilized will be strengthened. It will become a crime to threaten a massacre; more firearms will have their ammo microstamped; and officials will dive deeper into how violent extremism spreads on social media.

It’s well and good for a state with strict gun laws to make them stricter, and for Canada, a country without a Second Amendment or a horrid recent history of mass shootings, to limit firearm availability further. But in a Union of connected states, the bodies will keep piling up unless and until Congress takes simple steps to make it harder for people to get ahold of killing machines. Even then, it’s likely there’s enough firepower and ammo already in circulation, enough young men with death wishes, to cost thousands more lives. But — on Gun Violence Awareness Day, which comes Friday, and every day — we owe it to our children to try.