New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has never met a gun law she didn’t want to make harder.
Now she’s using a federal rule update as her latest excuse to pile on more restrictions for law-abiding citizens who just want to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
And what she’s planning for the next legislative session should have every gun owner in New York paying close attention.
What Hochul Is Actually Proposing
Hochul called for new laws to address reported rule changes coming from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that could allow for online firearms sales.
The ATF originally proposed the new rule on “non-over-the-counter” sales by Federal Firearm License dealers on May 8, with the agency seeking to alter its regulations to account for technological advances since 1993, when the Brady Act was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, allowing online orders and for the Form 4473 and National Instant Check System (NICS) to be run remotely instead of in-person.
In plain English, the Trump administration’s ATF looked at rules written in the early 1990s and decided they probably shouldn’t be frozen in time forever. The internet exists now. Background checks can be run electronically. That shouldn’t be a radical concept.
The NICS background check still runs on every covered sale. Form 4473 is still completed and retained by the dealer, along with standard bound-book recordkeeping. The seven-day delay and the law enforcement notification already apply to today’s shipped sales, and both would carry over unchanged under the proposal.
None of that stopped Hochul from treating the whole thing like a five-alarm emergency.
“Time and time again, we see the Trump administration concede to the gun lobby, and these rollbacks are yet another giveaway that will have devastating and dangerous effects across the country,” Hochul said in a statement.
“While the federal government paves the way for increased firearm trafficking and putting guns in the hands of those who should not have them, New York State is taking action to blunt their efforts by bolstering our nation-leading gun laws and committing to closing the loopholes that put lives in jeopardy,” she said.
The word “loopholes” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Background checks stay. Recordkeeping stays. ID verification stays. What changes is whether a buyer has to drive to a physical location to complete a process that can now be done securely online. That’s not a loophole. That’s called the 21st century.
The Full Package of New Restrictions
Hochul said she plans on filing a bill in the next legislative session to amend New York’s penal law to require in-person sale of firearms in response to the ATF rule changes that would allow online sales nationwide.
Another legislative proposal rolled out by Hochul would tighten the state’s background check requirements for firearm purchases by aligning them with the stricter rules already in place for ammunition sales.
As part of the immediate actions, the New York State Police will prioritize inspections of firearms dealers linked to guns used in crimes.
And there’s more. In May, Hochul signed a state budget that set criminal penalties for the manufacture of 3D firearms and requires minimum safety standards for 3D printer manufacturers to “block the production” of firearms and gun components.
So it’s not just one proposal. It’s a rolling campaign to make every step of legal gun ownership in New York more expensive, more complicated, and more dependent on government permission at every turn.
New York Type 01 licenses declined 15.4% between two ATF snapshots, compared with 8.7% nationally. That’s not a coincidence. When you bury gun dealers in inspections, compliance campaigns, and new regulations, some of them close. Fewer dealers means fewer options for law-abiding buyers. That’s the point.
Why This Pattern Should Concern Every Second Amendment Supporter
New York isn’t alone in this push. In April 2025, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation that requires anyone wishing to buy a modern semiautomatic firearm, including the AR-15 rifle, to first receive a firearms safety course eligibility card, then to complete a firearms safety course within five years.
And blue-state governors have been moving in lockstep on handguns too. In rapid succession, three blue states followed California’s lead and moved to ban some of the most commonly owned handguns nationwide, with governors in Maryland, Connecticut, and New York signing sweeping measures targeting Glock pistols and similar firearms within the span of a single week.
The strategy is obvious enough once you see it laid out. Don’t go for a single dramatic ban that draws a legal challenge and a Supreme Court ruling. Instead, layer restriction on top of restriction. Make the process harder. Make dealers nervous. Make buyers jump through hoops until enough of them give up. Call every incremental squeeze a “commonsense measure.”
But the Second Amendment doesn’t come with an asterisk that says “unless the governor of New York finds the process insufficiently burdensome.” The right to keep and bear arms belongs to law-abiding citizens, and it doesn’t disappear because Kathy Hochul decides federal modernization efforts are inconvenient for her political agenda.
The Firearms Policy Coalition flagged Hochul’s announcement almost immediately, noting that “the ATF rule changes would allow for online sales of firearms,” and that “at the start of the next legislative session, Governor Hochul plans on introducing legislation to amend the penal law to require in-person sale of firearms.”
And the people Hochul is targeting aren’t criminals. Criminals don’t fill out Form 4473. They don’t wait for NICS checks. They don’t go through licensed dealers at all. Every single restriction Hochul is piling on lands squarely on the shoulders of the law-abiding New Yorker who just wants to buy a rifle or a pistol through a legitimate channel.
That’s been the pattern in New York for years. Since taking office, Governor Hochul has committed more than $4 billion to public safety initiatives and doubled funding to combat gun violence in New York communities. Billions of dollars. And yet the answer to every problem is always the same: make it harder for good people to own guns.
At some point, the question worth asking is whether any of this is actually about public safety, or whether it’s about something else entirely. When a governor responds to a federal rule that keeps all existing background check requirements in place by calling it a threat to public safety and demanding new legislation, that’s not a policy response. That’s a political reflex.
But here’s what’s worth watching: Hochul’s in-person sales bill doesn’t exist yet. The contemplated Penal Law amendment requiring in-person firearm sales is not yet law, and no bill number or statutory text was identified in the announcement. She’s promising it for the next legislative session, which means there’s still time for New Yorkers who care about their rights to make some noise before it gets rammed through Albany.
Gun owners in New York have watched their rights get chipped away for decades. Every new restriction gets sold as the last one needed. It never is. And if Hochul gets her way, the next round of hoops will be waiting right behind this one.
Sources: Daily Caller; The Center Square; Just The News; Ammoland; NY State of Politics; Firearms Policy Coalition; Federal Register
