New York has received roughly $100 million for mental health services from the federal government under a landmark gun violence prevention bill passed last year, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced on Monday.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping measure signed shortly after the Uvalde school shooting, made gun trafficking and “straw purchasing” federal offenses and awarded $750 million nationally for mental and behavioral health services, among other measures.
Gillibrand, a former gun rights supporter, started penning gun gun violence prevention laws after replacing Hillary Clinton in the Senate in 2009. She named her first law after Nyasia Pryear-Yard, a 17-year-old Brooklyn teen who was struck and killed by a stray bullet over a decade ago.
A bulk of the bill’s mental healthcare funding for New York — $65 million — went to Vibrant Emotional Health, which runs the 988 crisis and suicide hotline. The money will also pay for about 400 new mental health professionals to work full-time in New York schools.
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon said at a news conference on Monday that mental health support in schools is a key tenant of preventing gun violence.
A 13-year-old boy was shot and killed at a Staten Island playground earlier this year, he said.
“When we went to the school to follow up with the students who were impacted with the trauma, there were no mental health services," he said. "We don't have [mental health support] to deal with the trauma after gun violence, and we don't have it to prevent gun violence.”
In addition to the funding for mental health services, the legislation made gun trafficking a federal offense.
Officials blame the “iron pipeline,” a route used to smuggle weapons from southern states with more relaxed gun laws to mid-Atlantic states with stricter restrictions like New York and New Jersey. About 80% of guns used in New York crimes are trafficked from other states, including Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and Florida, according to federal officials.
“One of the tremendous loopholes that has existed in fighting gun cases traditionally has been the lax gun laws down south and the iron pipeline,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said on Monday.
As of this fall, 207 defendants have been charged nationally under the new federal gun trafficking statue. At least nine of those defendants have been in New York, according to Gillibrand’s office.
Law enforcement officials have seized at least 120 guns from suspected gun traffickers in New York since last summer. At least 13 of those guns were AR-15 or AR-15-style rifles, according to Ishya Verma, a spokesperson for Gillibrand.
Verma noted that these estimates were conservative since Gillibrand’s office only had access to about half of the new criminal cases.
