Gun detractors and defenders are up in arms after spates of recent violence. What will new laws mean for our safety?

By Emily Johnson

The first person to be killed with a gun this year in Manhattan was a 16-year-old kid.
Raphael Ward loved baseball and was devoted to his 7-year-old brother. On the night of Jan. 4, he took a bullet to the chest after he refused to hand over his warm winter jacket to a group of thugs.
At the time, state Sen. Dan Squadron said of the crime, “We must continue to work together as a community to fight the scourge of gun violence and make our homes and our streets safer for our families. From stronger gun laws to improved safety at NYCHA developments, we are reminded far too often that the time to act is now.”

Vows of action after tragedy are common and seldom become reality, particularly where guns are concerned. But in this post-Sandy Hook era, suddenly everything that once seemed politically fraught is on the table. And New York is at the forefront of a long-dormant issue that has exploded into the national awareness since 26 people, including 20 young children, were gunned down in the Connecticut elementary school on Dec. 14.

On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that expanded a ban on assault weapons, limited the number of bullets allowed in magazines and bolstered mental health regulations surrounding gun ownership.

The response to the law, predictably, was immediate and furious. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott invited disgruntled New York gun owners to move to the Lone Star State. The National Rifle Association cried foul on the haste with which the bill was pushed through, and together with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, immediately organized a legal team to review the bill.
The governor defended speed as necessary to prevent a rush to snatch up more guns before the laws went into effect. Considering that in first weeks after the Sandy Hook shooting, the mere suggestion of gun control being reopened for discussion sent people around the country into a gun-buying frenzy, he may have had a point.

Sen. Squadron, a longtime advocate of increased gun control, welcomed the new regulations and called for President Barack Obama to follow suit.

“Our work isn’t done,” he said. “Where Albany has acted, Washington must now act as well.”
Washington didn’t take long to follow suit. Last week, invoking Sandy Hook’s child victims, Obama announced a comprehensive initiative aimed at rolling back gun violence and called on Congress to reinstate the national assault weapons ban and to establish universal background checks for anyone buying a firearm. He also signed 23 executive actions, which did not require congressional approval, that implemented steps like incentives for states to share background check information and hire school resource officers. These were moderate actions, for the most part, aimed at cracking down on school shootings from every angle.

Has there ever been a sleeper issue that, when roused, was more of a lightning rod than gun control? In a polarized country where the Second Amendment is defended with well-funded and fervent zeal, the president himself didn’t go near the issue during his first term, and treated it as taboo in a reelection campaign wary of scaring off swing-state voters.

But now that the NRA has lost its chokehold on the issue, the can of worms it has opened nationwide is astonishing. As liberal activists and politicians leap at this window of opportunity, the panicked gun lobby is doubling down, arguing that more guns make us safer. Conspiracy theories have sprung up claiming that the killings at Sandy Hook were fabricated, or part of an elaborate government plot. The First Amendment was thrown under the bus in favor of the Second when a White House petition to deport CNN’s Piers Morgan for publicly urging stronger gun control received over 100,000 signatures. It has set off heated debates about race in the context of mass shootings, which are predominantly carried out by white men. It has launched a series of provocative, viral articles on mental health by people identifying with shooter Adam Lanza, or with his mother. It has prompted blistering criticism of the media’s role in creating future mass shooters by sensationalizing their actions.

Amid all of this noise, is there no factual common ground? Will this bill actually be effective in curbing gun violence like the incident that claimed Raphael Ward’s life?

New York Assembly members and state senators, a largely blue assortment of people, overwhelmingly hailed the new bill as a positive step.

“While it should not have taken the tragedy of Sandy Hook to begin the long-overdue conversation on guns that we are currently having, I am glad that New York state, which already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, will act to make them tougher,” Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal said, while Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he was “very pleased that the governor said he would join the Assembly in enacting serious and meaningful gun safety legislation.”

Some mental health experts, however, had concerns about one provision of the law: namely, requiring therapists, doctors and social workers to report patients they see as dangerous—which would automatically disqualify them for gun ownership.

Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, told the New York Times that the requirement “represents a major change in the presumption of confidentiality that has been inherent in mental health treatment” and warned that it could discourage people with potentially homicidal tendencies from seeking help in the first place.

Other mental health elements of the plan have been better received, such as an amendment to Kendra’s Law. The 1999 law, which requires people who have been deemed a sufficient risk to society to undergo psychiatric treatment, has been extended through 2017 and outpatient treatment will now be required for a year, up from six months.

Laila Dewan, 37, who has two young sons and lives in the same Lower East Side housing complex where Ward lived with his mother, was cautiously optimistic about the New York law.

“It’s great,” she said. “It’s important to protect kids, you know?”

“It’ll be better for everybody, if it actually does make a difference.”

David Garza worked with Henry Street Settlement team to keep food and assistance flowing in the wake of the storm

by Emily Johnson

In the first days after Hurricane Sandy, thousands in downtown Manhattan were stranded in cold, dark apartments. FEMA, flush with disaster relief funds, had the resources to send a truck with 22,000 much-needed meals to the Lower East Side.

But when it came to actually getting that food into the mouths of hungry New Yorkers, the agency looked to a local organization that has spent more than a century getting to know the neighborhood from the ground up.

“We realized the value of our Meals on Wheels distribution routes,” said David Garza, the executive director of Henry Street Settlement, a nonprofit social service agency that has served the Lower East Side since the late 1800s. “We are a coordinating entity that distributes 1,200 meals a day to seniors, so quite literally we could do that work in the dark.”

And they did. Working by candlelight and flashlight and relying on smartphones and social media to coordinate volunteers in the absence of power and Wi-Fi, Garza and his Henry Street team oversaw an exhaustive door-to-door relief effort. They printed out maps and mobilized a brigade of volunteers on bicycles to canvas each building and follow up with food deliveries.

“Obviously the most severe challenge was the power outage,” Garza said. “The LES is a vertical area. People being trapped in buildings was the obvious and immediate concern. So we focused on identifying where and who needed supplies—for example, we’d get a tweet saying, ‘I have an old relative stuck in this apartment, can you help?’”

In many ways, the relief effort was not much of a departure from business as usual for Henry Street Settlement, which runs residential facilities, assists with job placement and offers senior services and youth programs to the largely low-income community. But Garza had never before encountered this level of need.

“People here always live on the precipice of poverty,” Garza said. “But what the storm has done is intensify that so they have to choose between food and rent. I was overwhelmed a couple of times. At one point literally right in front of Henry Street where we were distributing food … people were civil, but the need was palpable as lines formed. That really hit home. How incessant the need was.

It really struck me, ‘Thank God we’re here, what would they be doing?’”

During the blackout, Garza drove into the city daily at 5:30 a.m. to beat the HOV lane restrictions and stayed well into the evening. He was in regular phone communication with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to articulate what steps needed to be taken.

The speaker, who nominated Garza for the OTTY Award along with Chris Kui of Asian Americans for Equality, called the men “passionate, hard-working, organized members of the community” and credited them with saving lives.

“As soon as the storm hit, David was in immediate contact with my office,” Silver said. “He mobilized volunteers. He mobilized trucks to pick up FEMA supplies, he also had volunteers knock on doors and the National Guard deliver food supplies, meals and water.”

When the power finally came back on, Garza said, it brought a memorable end to what for many had become paralyzing uncertainty.

“You would think your local team won the Super Bowl,” he said, smiling. “You could hear it out in the street. It was emotional, because it had been palpable that we were in crisis. That nor’easter was bearing down. It was getting dangerous.”

With the immediate crisis behind them, Henry Street Settlement is gearing its efforts to more long-term recovery efforts like counseling and cash assistance.

“The silver lining for me and for Henry Street is really the performance of our staff and the way we came together as community,” Garza said. “People forget the value of collaboration. It’s literally our founding principle. It’s comforting to know that 121 years later, that’s what it’s still all about.”

The theme of the annual Village Halloween parade this year was to have been a 2012 Mayan countdown. With the streets of downtown Manhattan already dark and apocalyptic in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, the parade was cancelled for the first time in its venerated 39-year history.

But on Wednesday night, more than a hundred determined revelers whooped and danced through the Village anyway, brightening the darkened streets with costumes fashioned out of blinking lights and glowsticks. More people joined as the parade wound a zigzagging route up from Prince Street, past 14^th and toward the brightly lit buildings uptown.

Photo by Emily Johnson

“Well apparently [the parade] is rescheduled, but the only time to come out for Halloween is Halloween night,” said Christopher Hardwick, whose white coattails and top hat were decked out with blue lights.

“You can’t come out the Saturday before or the night before, its always Halloween where it’s rocking,” Hardwick said. “And there were a lot of people in the neighborhood without power with cabin fever. I walked here from the East Village, which has absolutely no power, down fourteen flights of stairs.”

Hardwick, who belongs to a group of costume enthusiasts known as Kostume Kult, was one of the organizers of the informal event. He regularly emcees the group’s float in the annual parade.

Police accompanied the parade through the streets, and for much of the way, the flashing lights on the NYPD vehicles were the main source of visibility. On Christopher Street, the crowd spilled into the middle of the road and officers had to hem them in with megaphones. Some of the marchers pitched in to restore order.

“Onto the sidewalk, darlings, everybody onto the sidewalk,” trilled an imposing figure dressed as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Some people on the event’s Facebook page had expressed worry that even a small, unofficial parade would be an unnecessary distraction for the beleaguered city. Jim Glazer, another organizer dressed as a red dragon, acknowledged these concerns.

“We had a mixed reaction,” said Glazer, more commonly known as Costume Jim. “Some people didn’t like the idea because they thought it would take away resources. But the people who really get art, I think, understand that helping people’s morale is a very important aspect of aid for downtown.”

It seemed to be working. Smiling faces appeared at windows lit by candlelight, peering down at the street and beckoning more people to come and look. Motorists stopped their cars on the street to take pictures. “Halloween is not dead!” one man yelled from a passing cab, eliciting cheers from the marchers. And occasionally the parade came upon unsuspecting, delighted costume-wearing people who joined in, swelling the size of the crowd as it marched on.

A small band featuring a large tuba-like instrument, akin to something out of a Dr. Suess story, provided the soundtrack for the parade. Cyclists rode alongside, speakers blasting Lady Gaga songs and the theme from “Ghostbusters.”

For fashion designer Megan Bielli, 24, the mob of light and noise was a welcome relief after days of quiet darkness in her East Village apartment, where she and her boyfriend had been steadily working their way through all of their perishable food.

“It’s been really dark and dreary going outside, walking around my neighborhood,” she said, a pair of glowstick ears perched on top of her head. “It was nice to go to work today where there’s electricity and charge my phone, check the internet. That’s where I found out about this. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about it.”

She said she intended to join the others in walking up to where the power was back on.

“The whole point is not to be a nuisance,” she said. “It’s Just to shine a little light on a dark time.”