NEW YORK: A CESSPOOL OF LOYALISTS TO THE CROWN DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, BECOMING ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT ZEALOTS THEREAFTER
MULTIPART SERIES: HISTORY OF NEW YORK’S HANDGUN LAW AND IMPACT OF BRUEN ON NEW YORK AND THE NATION
PART A: THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT, SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL, ABHORRED AND REPUDIATED THE RIGHT OF “THE COMMON MAN” TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE
New York never accepted the idea of a natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Sure, the State ratified the Nation’s Bill of Rights, which prominently included the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment. However, New York’s elder statesmen who agreed to that were likely never happy doing so.
They probably only did so to avoid many Americans inferring justifiably that the State was a viper’s nest of “Tories” (Loyalists to the Crown).
At the War's conclusion, they may have continued to harbor bad feelings about the fledgling Nation. Drawing this conclusion is not unsound.
New York alone furnished about 23,000 loyalist troops, perhaps as many as all the other colonies combined.
The loyalist fighters aroused a vengeful hatred among the patriots . . . and when taken in battle they were treated as traitors” [See the article in Brittanica].
Consider that number, 23,000, in relation to the total number of people residing in New York during the American Revolution: 25,000.
The largest cities in the colonies were Philadelphia, Pa, (43,000), New York, N.Y. (25,000), Boston, MA (16,000), Charleston, S.C. (12,000), and Newport, R.I. (11,000) [See the article in American Battlefield Trust] [emphasis my own]
A Further Note:
Over the course of the war, about 231,000 men served in the Continental Army, though never more than 48,000 at any one time, and never more than 13,000 at any one place. The sum of the Colonial militias numbered upwards of 145,000 men. France also dispatched a substantial force to North America beginning in 1779, with more than 12,000 soldiers and a substantial fleet joining the Colonial Americans by wars end.
At its peak, the British Army had upwards of 22,000 men at its disposal in North America to combat the rebellion. An additional 25,000 Loyalists, faithful to Great Britain, participated in the conflict as well. Nearly 30,000 German auxiliaries, or Hessians, were hired out by German princes and served alongside the British for the duration of the war [See the article in American Battlefield Trust].
A second article from the same source points out that of the “25,000 Americans [who] served the crown, some [fought] in British regiments, but most in ‘provincial’ regiments with other Loyalists.”
If this number is accurate and New York did provide the Crown with 23,000 troops, as cited supra, then New York provided the bulk of “Tories” (“Loyalists” or “Royalists”) who fought for England—for King George III against America’s “Patriots”—over ninety percent of the total.
This is remarkable. It is not to be dismissed as insignificant even if one recognizes that “most [New Yorkers] joined the Patriots.” . . . [Yet] “[b]y November 1776 the Patriots had completely evacuated New York. The state, including its vital port of Manhattan, remained under British control until the war’s end in 1781.” See the article on the website Ancestry.
Now juxtapose the number of New York City residents who fought for the Crown (George III) with the number of registered Democrats in New York City before the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, as reported by the local Buffalo news station, WKBW 7, an affiliate of the national broadcast news station, “ABC.”
This year, New York State has almost 13 million voters — 12,971,543 to be exact — registered to participate in the general election on November 3.
Who's voting
More than half of New York's voters are registered Democrats, outnumbering registered Republicans by almost 4 million. Here's a breakdown of voter registration as of September (noting that registration remained open for the November election through October 9):
Party Affiliation Number of Voters Percentage Voters Democrat 6,563,866 50.6%
Republican 2,843,692 21.92%
Undeclared 2,822,102 21.76%
Other 741,883 5.7%
What's at stake
New York State has 29 electoral votes in the presidential election . . . [and] those votes have historically gone to the Democratic candidate.
It’s no secret most New York City residents virulently oppose the notion of an “armed citizen.” That is perplexing considering the extent of criminal violence prevalent in the City. Apparently, most New York City dwellers soak up the propaganda spouted against “guns” and the right to armed self-defense. Imagine the impact of that attitude on the fate of Americans today if Patriots felt the same when America was a collection of thirteen British colonies 250 years before.
Had not 376,000 “Armed Patriots” taken up arms against a Tyrant, America would have remained a colony of the British Monarch and, thereafter, a component of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth was formed in 1931.
In the end, many Loyalists simply left America. About 80,000 of them fled to Canada or Britain during or just after the war. Because Loyalists were often wealthy, educated, older, and Anglican, the American social fabric was altered by their departure. American history brands them as traitors. But most were just trying to maintain the lifestyles to which they had become accustomed. [See the article in “U.S. History”].
How many New York “Loyalists” slithered back to England with the Red Coats or to Canada at the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War?
No doubt the Loyalists remaining in the new Nation would loathe the notion of an “armed American citizenry.” Weren’t these Loyalists the progenitors of today’s “Neoliberal Globalist” “elites?”
Of those who remained surreptitiously in the United States—many in New York—would they not operate as a “Fifth Column” to better insulate themselves from public observation and public accounting and quietly insinuate themselves throughout the States and the Federal Government, too?
Do their actions not demonstrate their enduring hostility to the Country, the Nation’s Constitution, and the American People, as demonstrated in State and Federal dictates?
These Globalist “elites” monopolize the Press and social media, sports, and entertainment.
They influence the thought processes of many of the Hoi Polloi in major cities like New York.
Would not succeeding generations of lawmakers, other elected officials, and the millions of State and Federal bureaucrats and officers share the same sympathies and sensibilities?
And would they not continue to operate through time as a “Fifth Column” to undermine Country, People, and State and Federal Constitutions? Have they not done this?
These Neoliberal Globalist “elites” (today’s “Tories”—Loyalists to a world empire) monopolize the Press, social media, sports, and entertainment.
These Globalists, lurking in the shadows, are tyrants whose aim is the destruction of our sovereign, independent Nation-State and the destruction of all Western nation-states.
They influence the thought processes of many of the Hoi Polloi in major cities like New York. Like all tyrants, these tyrants will not tolerate a nation’s armed citizenry.
However, the United States presents a conundrum for them because our Nation’s natural law right to armed self-defense is ingrained in every American's psyche and cast in stone in our Bill of Rights.
To deal with this intractable problem, these modern “Loyalists” to a world empire have crafted many tools in an attempt to sever Americans’ connection with their firearms.
One major tool is subterfuge, which is employed in many ways. One way involves the application of psychological conditioning, employed on an industrial scale to induce a phobic reaction toward firearms.
This phobic reaction is expressed as a rabid fear of firearms and suspicion toward those who wish to exercise their natural law right to keep and bear them.
From a rational perspective, this denial of the need to bear arms for one’s personal defense, as well as for the common defense to thwart the tyranny imposed by a ruthless, omniscient, and omnipotent government, is both inexplicable and distressing.
In New York, this fanatical and enduring hostility toward a free, sovereign, and well-armed citizenry manifests as a refusal to recognize a person's dire need to exercise his right to armed self-defense against violent predatory attack.
Does not this State Government mindset explain the expansive time, money, and expense expended to destroy the exercise of the right to armed self-defense?
The New York Government has always shown reluctance to acknowledge and accede to the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Over time, it has become fashionable in some circles to express outrage toward firearms and those who wish to exercise their right to bear them. The New York Government no longer feels it necessary to hide its revulsion toward firearms and its visible contempt for those who cherish their sacred right to keep and bear them.
Instead, the Government projects open hostility toward the fundamental right to armed self-defense.
To this day, and after several renditions made to the State’s Constitution, no individual right to armed self-defense exists or ever existed in the Bill of Rights of New York’s Constitution. And none is forthcoming.
Even in New York’s first Constitution, reference to an armed person was grounded in the notion of a “militia.” See discussion infra.
This provision was dropped but would appear later in various iterations.
However, specific reference to “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” would be relegated to statute only. You will not find the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” delineated in the State Constitution.
Moreover, the ‘militia’ clause in the latest rendition of the State Constitution is not a “right,” for it does not appear in the State Constitution’s “Bill of Rights,” Article I, but instead, in Article XII, “Defense.” See discussion infra.
The first Constitution, a creature of the Legislature, did include a portion of the Declaration of Independence. However, that, too, was dropped from all later versions.
What explains these apparent anomalies between the first New York Constitution and later versions?
Article XL of the original Constitution, enacted in 1777, says—
And whereas it is of the utmost importance to the safety of every State that it should always be in a condition of defence; and it is the duty of every man who enjoys the protection of society to be prepared and willing to defend it; this convention therefore, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, doth ordain, determine, and declare that the militia of this State, at all times here-after, as well in peace as in war, shall be armed and disciplined, and in readiness for service. That all such of the inhabitants of this State being of the people called Quakers as, from scruples of conscience, may be averse to the bearing of arms, be therefrom excused by the legislature; and do pay to the State such sums of money, in lieu of their personal service, as the same may, in the judgment of the legislature, be worth.
And that a proper magazine of warlike stores, proportionate to the number of inhabitants, be, forever hereafter, at the expense of this State, and by acts of the legislature, established, maintained, and continued in every county in this State [emphasis my own].
See the article in the Historical Society of New York Courts.
Did this early Constitution, enacted during the commencement of the American Revolution, serve to promote the false idea the New York Legislature stood with America’s Patriots when it did not and had sought to cloak where its true loyalties lay?
And, knowing that 23,000 New York Loyalists did serve the Crown during the American Revolution, wasn’t it the State Legislature’s fervent belief and wish that New York’s militia could serve as a provincial military arm in service to George III and not to the Continental Army? Likely, so.
Most of those serving in the provincial arm of the Crown (the militia) were New York Loyalists.
Yet, New York’s militia would not be necessary after the British Empire lost the colonies. The State Legislature could dispense with it.
Perhaps having recognized the U.S. would never again become a colony of the British Empire, the drafters of New York’s First Constitution may have quietly decided to remove any reference to the right of the people to keep and bear arms lest that force one day turn against those “elite.” Reference to a “militia” would undergo several iterations.
” New York Art. XII § 1, which consists of only one Section titled “Defense,” sets forth,
The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state. The legislature shall provide for the discharge of this obligation and for the maintenance and regulation of an organized militia.
The concept of a ‘militia’ for “defense” would undergo several iterations in the continuing development of the State Constitution. The aforementioned recitation is the latest.
See “Constitutional ‘Stuff’: House Cleaning The New York Constitution – Part I,” 77 Alb. L. Rev. 1385 (2013-2014), by Peter J. Galie and Christopher Bopst:
In New York the conservation, social welfare, and housing articles are examples of policies that were deemed fundamental and as such deserving of a place in the state's governing charter. Contrariwise, ensconcing detailed policy measures in the constitution runs the risk of limiting the ability of future governments to adapt to new circumstances and unforeseen changes.
Policy issues are particularly susceptible to the passage of time. The militia article is a case-in-point. It has been revised on a number of occasions to reflect the changing role of the militia in New York State [emphasis my own].
The ‘militia’ Article in New York’s Constitution is incongruent, considering its appearance elsewhere in New York law.
If it appears to have different purposes subject to changing times, circumstances, and whims, is that also true of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms?” It would seem so to the New York Government.
Reference to the “militia” appears prominently in two sections of New York law: the State Constitution and New York’s Civil Rights Law.
In the latter instance, it appears with the independent clause “the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.” However, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed” appears only once in New York law: the Civil Rights Law. See discussion, infra.
The “elites” have always controlled the New York Government, and wealthy, powerful “elites” have assumed firm control over the Federal Government.
They have always been suspicious of the “Common Man,” who happens to claim a right to armed self-defense to safeguard life and well-being.
That threat to the “Common Man” in America now comes from those who control the levers of power inside the Country. They have joined forces with ruthless elements outside it. New York’s militia is in service to Tyrants.
The aims of the New York Government are one with those of the Federal Government under the present Biden Administration:
The “Common Man” must remain confined, constrained, and condemned to non-significance and prevented from becoming a threat to the governing “elite.”
New York revised its Constitution four times since first ratifying it in 1777, almost eleven years before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788.
The first New York Constitution did not have a formal Bill of Rights. The State Legislature would add that ten years later.
That first Constitution, enacted in 1777, was “statutory” (i.e., as enacted by the New York Legislature, not the people at the “Ballot Box”). The State’s first Bill of Rights was statutory as well. The New York Legislature enacted it in 1787.
New York ratified the latest version of its Constitution in 1938. It has undergone many tweaks since that time.
As with every further rendition of the New York Constitution—from the States’s first “Bill of Rights” to the present one—none included a “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” See, e.g., the article in Ballotpedia.
New York’s first TRUE Constitution (the second version, 1821) required a vote by the people to become effective. Read about this in History of the New York Courts (PDF).
That history raises the question of whether the Legislature has sought to treat further amendments to the State Constitution much like Statutes allowing the Legislature to make substantive changes to the New York Constitution without requiring a vote of the people.
This would mean treating amendments much like statutes—impermanent, readily repealed, or otherwise easily modifiable.
One must wonder: Did not the average person in New York, “the Common Man,” wish to include language in the “Bill of Rights” of his Constitution describing “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” that mirrored the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution? Was there any debate on the subject? Who drafted this Constitution and the renditions that followed?
The New York Legislature had no interest in that and never offered it as an amendment to be voted on by the people. The Legislature opposed the idea, given the import of such an amendment in a document of the nature of a “constitution,” unlike a run-of-the-mill statute.
A right to armed self-defense, reflecting the language of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, did eventually make its way into the “Law” of New York—New York Statute.
The right to keep and bear arms appears in the Consolidated Laws of the State of New York, not in the State’s Constitution.
A person must wonder why it appeared at all in New York Law.
Was this done merely to placate those New Yorkers who insisted on some language somewhere in New York Law?
That language would never appear as a Constitutional Right for New Yorkers. Also, applying the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to the States—through the U.S. Supreme Court imprimatur—would not occur until the McDonald ruling in 2010.
Since the New York Legislature never accepted the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms as a codification of Natural Law but did, apparently, feel pressure to enact a right to armed self-defense, at least in Statute, as a manmade right, a creature of the Legislature alone, the right to armed self-defense exists and remains in Statutory form only.
Even then, it took over a century for that to happen.
Yet, curiously, the New York Government did ratify the Nation’s Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791. On that date, the Nation’s Bill of Rights became an indelible component of the United States Constitution. Still, it was no easy task. Many in the New York Legislature opposed ratification.
. . . the politics of ratification within the [New York] state legislature were intense and bitter. New York became one of the last states—the 11th—to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The first state capital was Kingston (1777); in 1797 the capital was moved to Albany [See the article in Brittanica].
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms,” as it appears in New York Law, is almost identical in wording to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
However, it appears in the New York Statute. This means it is a manmade construct only, not a natural law right preexistent in Man.
The Legislature intentionally kept “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” out of the New York State Constitution to prevent anyone from proclaiming it as natural law bestowed on Man by the Divine Creator.
However, one change was made to the wording. The State Legislature replaced the phrase “shall not be infringed,” as it appears in the Nation’s Constitution, with the words “cannot be infringed”). Why there is a difference in usage isn’t made clear. We may speculate.
The phrase ‘shall not' is formal in the present context, while ‘cannot’ is colloquial.
It may be the Legislature sought, through the slight difference in wording, to draw a distinction, albeit a subtle one, between the language of the Second Amendment “Right” as natural law, not subject to repeal or tampering, and New York’s “right” as merely manmade law, subject to repeal and modification.
The language of the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is universally important to the country's citizenry. At the time, its impact was only presumed to limit the Federal Government, not the states.
It bears repeating — ”the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” as a manmade construct of the New York Legislature, is transitory and impermanent. It is subject to Legislative repeal, irrespective of the people's wishes because it is a creature of man. It is not perceived as a natural law right, preexisting in man. And so it is not taken to be a thing beyond the power of the Legislature to tamper with.
The statutory right is in Article 2 (Bill of Rights) of the Civil Rights Law, NY CLS Civ R § 4 of the Consolidated Laws of the State of New York.
However, it is also important to point out that this “Bill of Rights” in New York’s Civil Rights Law does not have the same weight as the State’s Constitutional “Bill of Rights.” Therefore, it is not considered fundamental, unmodifiable, and eternal. The notion of two Bill of Rights in New York law is understandable but no less shocking. The Legislature has drawn a bright line between “rights” it treats as manmade and temporal and those it accepts as “natural law” and eternal.
Those forces that control the people of New York have refused to acknowledge the right to self-defense (of which armed self-defense is but an aspect) as a natural, “eternal” law).
In New York, true self-defense does not exist in the person. The New York Government does not recognize it and begrudges those who assert the right. That explains the obstacles the New York Government has created to frustrate those citizens who desire to exercise it.
Self-defense is a prerogative of Government that it bestows on a person as a revocable privilege.
This explains why the Government talks incessantly about “Public Safety” that accrues to the Government and carefully avoids mention of “Personal Safety” that accrues to the individual.
The New York Legislature enacted the Statute pertaining to the right of the people of New York to keep and bear arms on February 17, 1909. It remains in effect as originally enacted.
Because the Bill of Rights of New York’s Civil Rights Law is a “manmade” law crafted by the State Legislature—a transient, modifiable, constructed right—it is a mere concession to the “Common Man” in New York. It is impermanent, perhaps even temporary—trivial in its import and impact, notwithstanding its ostensibly emphatic language.
The New York Government has repeatedly shown this New York “Civil” Right to mean little, as the phrase “cannot be infringed” is routinely, vigorously, and mettlesomely infringed by the State Government.
This is not to say New York’s Constitutional Bill of Rights lacks gravitas.
Nonetheless, the Bill of Rights in the State Constitution has undergone several iterations. That fact should not be lost on anyone.
At present, Eighteen Rights appear in the State Constitution.
Of those Eighteen Rights, nothing is said or even alluded to about the right of the people to keep and bear arms or any right to self-defense.
See NY CLS Const Art. I. Art I is where New York’s Bill of Rights appears. It is titled “Bill of Rights.”
The Democrat-Party-controlled Legislature in Albany has not sought to repeal the Statutory right of the people to keep and bear arms or modify its language to date. It doesn’t because it need not do so and likely doesn’t wish to make waves by doing so, at least now.
Instead, the Legislature has used subterfuge and wile to slowly chisel away at the exercise of the right—an insidious, inexorable process, but one leading to the same result, albeit without fanfare and bravado.
This would likely be less easy for the Legislature to accomplish if the Right existed in Article I of the State Constitution instead of Article 2 of the State’s Civil Rights Law.
To urge a substantial number of the New York public to support the slow strangulation of armed self-defense in New York, the State Government and a collaborative, sympathetic Press have continuously used propaganda to gain the public’s cooperation with or, at least, acquiescence with its policy aims pertaining to exercise of that right.
That Government policy does nothing to serve the public’s interest in securing its safety and well-being. The Government aims to corral and control the civilian populace.
The State aims to render the New York public impotent, wholly dependent on the Government to provide for the public’s safety and well-being.
Yet, the New York Government has repeatedly demonstrated crass incompetence or outright and continuous indifference to the safety and well-being of its residents in its “Public Safety” measures.
The lack of a constitutional framework for exercising the right to armed self-defense in New York inevitably results in constant frustration for the citizens who reside or work there.
The State does nothing concrete to ensure effective “Public Safety.” Yet it creates roadblocks that constantly frustrate the public’s rights and responsibilities and the need to ensure its “Personal Safety.”
This frustration is aptly reflected in the State’s nascent anti-Second Amendment legislation.
That very early legislation preceded the Sullivan Act, but it laid the groundwork for it and more sophisticated, complex, and all-encompassing legislation subsequent to Sullivan through the ensuing decades and centuries.
The New York Government has given New Yorkers no reprieve. It constantly devises ever more insidious policies to constrain the exercise of the right to armed self-defense.
Next, we will examine the precursors to Sullivan, the seeming reasons for its enactment, and its import.
________________________________________________________