Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: During Gun Violence Awareness Month, Governor Hochul Codifies New York State Office of Gun Violence Prevention

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation to codify the New York State Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

So great to see all of you gathered for such an important purpose, please sit down. Love the orange – looking good, looking good on a hot summer day; it's the right color. I want to thank some of the individuals who've joined us here today, and starting with none other than our amazing Attorney General Tish James, who's been on the forefront of keeping people safe, so grateful for her.

Also one of our sponsors, Senator Zelnor Myrie, let's give him a round of applause, thank you. Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman, thank you for all your championship and Nicole Myers, a program Manager from our programs that we're gonna be talking about our SAVE program, but also all of you. All of you who have stepped up and all of our other elected officials who've been recognized here today.

I want to say this, you know some of you are here because it's something you feel passionate about. Many of you are here because something tragic touched your lives, and for you to be able to harness that pain and that devastation. Whether it was a loved one, a neighbor, just someone you knew. To be able to bring that together and use it as a force of good, powerful force of good to stand together.

I so admire that enormously, and I want to thank all of you. I know our district attorneys have joined us too. I see our Manhattan District Attorney has joined us and also our Bronx District Attorney. You guys were recognized, right? Darcel Clark, Alvin Bragg, thank you, and they've been really great partners of mine in government as we work through issues in the legislature.

And your voices are so important, the way you represent our people. But as you know, from day one, my number one priority has been keeping people safe – it's that simple. When I first came into office, I said, I'm gonna take an aggressive stance when it comes to keeping people safe and fighting crime, and driving down the soaring rates of gun violence because one is too many.

And I wanted to make New York State a safer place to live, work, and raise your families. So part of it starts with the money. This is an area we had not invested enough in over many years. So collectively working with our legislators, $2.6 billion dollars has been spent in the last four years with effective, proven crime fighting strategies. First of all, I also said, what about the other states? A lot of our guns are coming up through this iron pipeline, right?

I'll tell you right now they're not being manufactured in New York. We know that. They're coming from other states that have much looser rules, even as close as Pennsylvania. I mean our gun traffickers were going down with maybe the pickup truck or a van or some vehicle going down to the gun shows in Pennsylvania, loading up the back, coming up Route 81.

Now, when you get to Route 81 here, I know the geography of this state like the back of my hand. You’re either going north to Syracuse, or you're heading east and you're heading into the Bronx. Those are the places they're bringing the guns. So I knew we needed to work with other states, all those guns that were flowing in from that I-95 corridor.

So I said, let's bring together all the other northeastern states, mostly Democrat, but even some Republicans have banded together to share information. How we cut off that pipeline and shut it down once and for all we've made tremendous progress there as well. Also our State Police – our State Police work so hard and they're out there keeping our highways safe. Making sure that our communities are safe – but also I knew we could deploy them more effectively in this fight against gun violence. And as a result of the retraining and redeploying them in the places where it really makes a difference, our state police have now seized three times as many more guns than they had previously. So I'm gonna give our law enforcement members across the state another round of applause for what they do.

Unprecedented collaboration with agencies working with state, local, federal partnership to get violent criminals off our streets. Our crime analysis center is equipped with the latest technology. So again, sharing information – cutting edge ballistic technology so we can link crimes from one to another, identify the patterns that are happening. It's often the same smaller group of people. It's not everybody, and that's how we can identify the perpetrators and fund a new center in New York City to further our data collection and intelligence gathering.

I know a lot of you're also on this fight to strengthen our red flag laws, and I am so proud of our success to keep guns out of the hands of people all over. This is something that should have been done. It should be done all over the country, and we are number one in the country in terms of using extreme risk orders of protection to say the signs are there – this is someone who should not have a gun.

And I'm talking about not just the random gun violence or the gang violence. I'm talking about the white supremacist who came from the Southern Tier, drove three hours to my hometown of Buffalo and slaughtered 10 of my neighbors. The red flag laws were strengthened right after that.

It's no longer law enforcement who's required to alert individuals and take – not just alert – take action to get the guns out of these people who telegraphs it. They're going to do something harmful to themselves or others. It's a larger group of people who see the signs, and this is how we cut off the intentional mass shootings like we had there in Buffalo.

But that is more of the one-off, isn't it? More of the crimes are committed in our neighborhoods, our streets, and we're gonna continue doing that. And our investment in the community organizations. And since my days back in Buffalo as a local official, I've worked closely with SNUG and all the dads groups, and the moms groups, and everybody. The ones, many of them lived a life where they're incarcerated, committed crimes themselves, but they're the most trusted messengers you'll ever find. They're the ones with the lived experience to be out there with programs supported by the state and say, I'm here to make sure that you make a different turn in the road than I did, and you'll live a better, healthier life. In fact, you'll live a life instead of being gunned down as a teenager or young adult as we’ve fallen too many of our residents.

So these efforts are paying off. Look at New York City, we work closely with the city. These efforts are paying off because shootings are down 54 percent since 2021. When I first became Governor, they've been down 54 percent. Down 20 percent just from last year. Murders are down 41 percent since 2021. 28 percent – year over year. That's the trend we've been waiting for. For so long – for a long time those numbers were going up and now they're going down. Give yourselves a round of applause. That trend means more people are staying alive. Fewer families shattered and that's so good, so good. It's something we should be so proud of and it's not just in the city, it's all over upstate New York.

We had seen spikes in crimes in all of our upstate cities. And all the communities that participate in our gun involved violence initiative, we call it GIVE, 21 Counties. All those numbers are trending downward, and you should remember this statistic when people brag about other states who want to go to other states. There's no state but ours right, don't even bother. But if you want to use another data point to make you proud, New York has the third lowest firearm mortality rate in the nation – third lowest.

That means our proven strategies working with our communities are working, and what does this mean? That there's far more lives untouched, unscathed. The way many of you have been, the searing pain you've had to go through. We've spared so many more people that same experience. These people are still out there raising their kids, going to work, chasing their dreams and making a difference.

So we never — as a football fan say — we will never spike the football. Never. We have so much more work to do. We're heading into summertime. You know what happens? School's out. Our young people are not as preoccupied during the day. People are staying out later at night. There's a lot of festivals and activities and so many places where people are gathering and all of a sudden we're in a volatile situation.

One shooting victim is too many. I just look at what happened yesterday. So many of us marched earlier in the day and that Pride Parade in New York City. It was so exciting. It was one big party, wasn't it? The Attorney General was there, everybody. You feeling okay today? But you know what? One of the busiest days of the year in Greenwich Village, two little girls are shot, teenage girls, steps from the historic Stonewall Inn where thousands and thousands had gathered earlier. Screams rippled down the block, people ran for their lives. That in itself is a traumatic experience. It shakes you to your core. That sense of security that every New Yorker deserves to have, it's shattered in a moment like that. And then their families.

People deserve to be safe and feel safe. Sometimes there's a difference. I can tell people statistically, you're very safe. You should feel good. But you know what? It's how you feel in here and what's in your head and what alarms go off when you're walking down the street, no matter what time of day it is. Or when you're reading something in the news that happens, “That could be me, that could be my kids” – on the streets or the subways. That's why this is such an important area for all of us to stand together and we have to continue redoubling our efforts to combat gun crime.

There's so many other issues out there, right? You see what's happening in Washington. That starts your day, reading the news down there, watching the news. It's tough. But Donald Trump likes to call himself the law and order president. He claims he is making America safe again, and yet he tells school shooting victims’ families to get over it? No sense of compassion or empathy, responsibility? No sense of let's make sure this never happens again? “Get over it.”

He shut down — not funded with more money — but shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Unbelievable. And the Department of Justice canceled hundreds of outgoing grants already allocated; community groups here and all over the State counting on that money to do God's work here on earth to keep us safe, and for victims and their families to help them heal. And he just says, “No more money,” so they could fund tax breaks for the wealthiest in our country? Where are our priorities? And how do you not realize the community-based anti-violence groups are where it's making all the difference in the world. You should be quadrupling the money that goes to them.

And some of the people from these organizations have joined us here today. And again, I will never be able to thank you enough for not just the way you work to turn your own life around, but to use that to help others. So many people have that opportunity. Anybody could do that, but so few do, and you have — and as your Governor, I'm so grateful for you — mentoring at-risk youth, encouraging young people to pick up a book or a basketball instead of a gun.

As I said, I know many of you've lost a loved one, and I know it's emotionally draining even to come here because their image is ever present in your mind. But especially an event like this, it's draining emotionally. But yet, you show up every day, and that commitment is what saves lives.

So to all the people involved in fighting gun violence, especially in our communities, please stand up and let me give you a round of applause. Please, come on. I know you're out there. I know you're out there. I applaud you. I applaud you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

While congressional Republicans and Donald Trump try to undermine your work, we will not stand idly by and let them run roughshod over everything we've worked so hard to do in New York. And while they may shun gun violence programs like yours, we're investing more than ever before: $347 million in this year's Budget. Thank you again to our legislators.

$5 million for New York City's crisis management system, this supports faith-based outreach, which is so important. Training, staffing and making sure we have the resources we need.

And also, I mentioned the way I was shuttering the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, you know what we do? We sign ours and make sure it's in our laws forever. Ours will now be codified into law, and in a couple moments we'll show how we are different than Washington — we want people to stay alive. We respect every single life, and we're going to fight to do that.

So we will sign a statement, sign a bill that reflects our values as New Yorkers and let people know that our office will now be housed in the Division of Criminal Justice Services. The main focus will be getting to the root of gun violence — Why is this happening? We've been talking about our entire lives. Why is it still happening? — and supporting the same community-based organizations that the feds are putting on the chopping block.

Thank God we're in New York, but I feel for the other states and other cities who don't have the ability to stand up, nor the desire. So in fact, we'll have $5 million in grants through this office that will go out this summer because I know that money is essential. It's needed now, and I thank all of you for the role you played.

You're on the ground. You're mediating disputes. You're building trust and stopping the shootings before they happen. So you'll never get a thank you from someone who's walking down the street alive today. They'll never know that it was your efforts that may have directly led to that, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you know that we're going to continue fighting for all of you and let you know that to the Republicans — Republicans who are listening, don’t know if they are — but if you care about keeping crime rates down, if you care about protecting the people you represent, then stop playing political games. Stand up to the president. Say, “I know these programs work. I want my constituents to stay alive. I don't want anybody else victimized. I don't want families traumatized.” And demand that he reverse those illegal cuts that right now are crucial anti-violence programs we so desperately need.

And finally, follow the lead of places like New York and enact common sense gun reforms that the vast majority of Americans want. They have the power to do this. They must use that power to help people stay alive. That's their responsibility. So let us stand up together and demand this. Even something as basic as background checks — that they can't get that done after children are slaughtered decades ago? Two decades ago?

We're not going anywhere. We're going to keep fighting. We know God is on our side. God has brought many of us together in this room to talk about this, and we will rise up and say, in our State of New York, people's lives matter. People matter to us. And I thank every single one of you for being part of this journey, part of this cause, and trying to alleviate the pain that is so palpable out there.

Thank you and ever upward to New York. Thank you very much everybody.