Will the last sane person to leave New York please remember to shut off the lights?

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas has an interesting policy in place for the prosecutors working for her office. They’re not allowed to have handguns. I don’t mean they can’t bring them into court or into their office. They can’t own them and they can’t apply for a permit. It’s a condition of employment with the DA’s office. The world has officially gone insane. (NRA-ILA)

Madeline Singas, Acting District Attorney for Nassau County, New York, is a hypocrite. Worse, she is willing to gamble with the lives and safety of her staff and their families for her own perceived political benefit. While claiming “a commitment to justice, compassion, and integrity” and boasting about keeping “more vulnerable people safe,” she enforces a policy of mandatory disarmament amongst the attorneys who put their own safety on the line to administer justice in her jurisdiction. On Monday, Prof. Eugene Volokh broke the story that the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office bars prosecutors from having handguns, even at home.

Prosecutors, considered the top law enforcement officials of their jurisdictions, take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. They are invested with great public trust, making decisions that profoundly affect the life, liberty, and property of the residents of their jurisdictions, decisions that can increase or decrease the public’s respect for the justice system and the rule of law. The system can only work if they take that oath seriously.

Somehow this woman manages to keep her job, though I suppose that’s not terribly surprising in a state run by Andrew Cuomo, the originator of the hilariously named Safe Act. Even if we were to buy into the idea that most gun control laws are enacted with good intentions, they are ostensibly crafted to keep guns out of the hands of the bad guys. In what world are we going to lump prosecutors who are charged with putting criminals out of business in with the quarry they are pursuing?

Another central argument put forth by gun grabbers is that most people “don’t really need a gun anyway.” We won’t beat that particular dead horse of stupidity yet again today, but even if that were a valid argument to make, how many people are more likely to need a gun than the prosecutors? They are the very public face of the state when it brings gang members and maniacs to justice before the bar. Do you suppose that some of these gangs take offense and ponder getting a bit of payback? As noted by the author above, Fox News had an article a couple of years ago exploring the murder of more than a dozen prosecutors. Vastly higher numbers have been assaulted or threatened simply for doing their jobs. When they go home at night they don’t have a security detail such as is present in court. They’re regular citizens like the rest of us and a determined criminal wouldn’t have to work all that hard to find out where they and their families live.

The fact is that Ms. Singas isn’t the problem. She’s just a symptom of a much larger disease running through New York. She no doubt has her political career in mind and wants to score big points with the Democrat faithful so she can move on to bigger and better things. Let’s just pray that her selfishness doesn’t see her leaving a dead prosecutor in her wake. Small wonder that a recent Gallup poll showed that citizens increasingly view the government as a greater threat to their safety than the criminals.