Constantinides to Introduce Gun Offender Registry Bill

With a spate of gun violence making headlines on the local and national level, New York City Councilman Costa Constantinides and several colleagues will introduce a bill to create an online gun offender registry to enhance local public safety efforts. 

The registry proposal, which will be announced by Constantinides Thursday morning in front of City Hall, is an updated version of similar legislation introduced last year that gained little traction. The new bill mandates that registered gun offenders be listed in a publicly available online directory, including a searchable database. If it passes, individuals would be able to sign up free of charge for automatic emails notifying when a new offender moves into a geographic area they specified. Constantinides is the lead sponsor along with Council colleagues Ritchie Torres and Paul Vallone and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. 

"It gives communities notification, and information is power, and it allows our communities to know who's in our neighborhood, to have more than one set of eyes on them, to give law enforcement more information, but more to give communities more information as to who's living in their neighborhood," Constantinides said. "The database already exists. The NYPD has had it since 2006. It makes it public, it allows for email notifications for members of the neighborhood, it's searchable, it provides the name, the street number, the general description and the crime of which the person has been convicted of. All these things give the community more tools in our toolbox to keep us safe." 

The updated bill also has a "rehabilitation aspect" that was not included in the previous version. A registered gun offender would be taken off the registry with a clean arrest record after four years. 

"If you're a good actor and have really rehabilitated yourself and have left that life that has previously gotten you into trouble and you spend four years as a good actor with no arrests, you would now be taken off that registry," Constantinides said. "It's not a punitive measure, it's a public safety measure."

Constantinides added that he hoped the bill would get a hearing in the coming weeks.