Calling for an end to gun violence

City Councilmember and Senate hopeful Joseph Addabbo Jr. stood with representatives of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and advocacy group Mothers Against Guns recently to decry gun violence.
The conference, on Thursday, August 28, was held in front of the garage in Ozone Park where cab driver Enois Malbranche was employed. The cabbie was shot in the face by one of three women who allegedly robbed him on August 7.
Malbranche, who had to have an eye surgically removed after the bullet lodged in the socket, was scheduled to attend, but had to return to the hospital for treatment.
“This man, who just lost his wife to cancer, now has to deal with the loss of his livelihood,” said Bhairavu Desai, spokesperson for the Alliance.
Pointing to an incident in which another cab driver in Elmhurst was shot in the face on August 22 and a third driver in the Bronx was shot just a week later, Desai declared, “Taxi drivers are on the front lines of violence every day and this month has been one of the bloodiest.”
“Cab drivers are 60 times more likely to die on the job than other workers,” Desai stated, adding, “That is the issue for the 100,000 of us who are in the taxi industry.”
Acknowledging the spate of cab robberies, Addabbo pointed to the gunpoint rape and robbery of an Ozone Park woman on Monday August 25.
“We want to keep our communities safe and supportive places for people to raise their families, yet recent gun violence is a serious obstacle to that goal,” Addabbo said.
“Enough is enough!” declared Liz Bishop-Goldsmith, president and founder of Mothers Against Guns, a Jamaica-based group which has been advocating for gun-control for at least a dozen years.
“Unless common sense state and federal legislation is enacted, we will continue to see the flow of blood in the streets of our communities,” she predicted.
Though Addabbo and the other speakers, including Assemblymember Audrey Pheffer, had praise for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent lawsuit against suspect out-of-state gun dealers, they had harsh words for the Republican-controlled Senate. Addabbo called for passage of two bills that have passed the Assembly and are stalled in committee in the Senate.
The Micro-stamping Act would require every semi-automatic pistol sold or brought into New York after January 1, 2010 to use a patented technology that has not yet been licensed to any gun manufacturers that would ostensibly give every fired pistol cartridge a unique mark, thus identifying the firearm.
California passed similar legislation in 2007, although a peer-reviewed study by the University of California at Davis found the technology, “does not work well for all guns and ammunition tested in a pilot study by researchers from the forensic science program.”
The Gun Dealer Responsibility Act would, among other requirements, demand that every person who sells a gun, keep every firearm and every round of ammunition in their possession in separate locked, fireproof vaults when they are not open for business, and attach a 160-word warning label to every firearm.
Dealers would also have to conduct training for every consumer, keep permanent records of all federal firearm traces and analyze them to look for patterns, “to determine whether there is a pattern of firearms, rifles, or shotguns sold by the dealer being used for criminal purposes, and, if such pattern exists, take corrective action and report such findings and such corrective action” to the state.
While admitting that the “Gun Dealer Responsibility Act” and the “Micro-stamping Act,” the two bills currently bottled up in the senate, “may not be perfect,” Addabbo called his demand for their passage, “a way to get the discussion started.”
“These bills are a step in the right direction,” Addabbo said.