‘Hitler Would Be Proud’

Republican Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin today said “Hitler would be proud” of the way the gun control legislation passed through both houses.

McLaughlin, along with other Senate and Assembly Republicans, held a news conference this morning to push an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would limit the governor’s use of messages of necessity that waive the three-day aging process for measures.

But McLaughlin took the issue a bit further.

“We were told to shut up and vote and that’s what this is all about,” McLaughlin said. ”Just don’t question it and vote. That’s basically the message here. If that’s not dictatorial, I don’t know what is. Hitler would be proud, Mussolini would be proud of what we did here, Moscow would be proud, but that’s not democracy.”

McLaughlin, asked later if felt the Hilter and Mussolini comments were appropriate, didn’t back down.

“I said it was Mussolini-like,” he said.

Prodded further, McLaughlin stood by the dictator comparison.

“I’m not calling the governor a dictator,” he said. ”I’m saying this was a dictatorial thing to do.”

Cuomo has issued fewer messages of necessity than his predecessors; they presumably were not compared to Hitler or other World War II-era dictators at the time.

But Republicans and gun-rights advocates were particularly incensed by the gun control law passing with the waiving of the three-day aging process. The Senate passed the measure just before midnight, while the Democratic-led Assembly approved the measure the following afternoon after a lengthy floor debate.

A Siena College poll this week found most voters were not concerned with the process by which the gun control law was approved.

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