STANDING UP AGAINST BARBARISM: Free Meredith Graves.

New York City may not be full of people who believe in American Exceptionalism, but it is stuffed to the gills with people who believe in New York Exceptionalism, and it maintains a firearms-regulation regime that may be unconstitutional and certainly is far more strict than the practice of most of the rest of the country. So draconian are its laws in the matter of concealed firearms that the plain dictionary meanings of words commonly are discarded: Ms. Graves stands to be convicted of a violent felony, even though she plainly had no criminal intent, much less violent criminal intent. Likewise, a person may be charged with carrying a loaded gun even when the gun is in fact unloaded and kept in a locked carrying case, if the ammunition is kept in the same case. Under New York law, up is down, unloaded is loaded, and an innocent error is a malicious crime of violence.

Time for New York to catch up with the rest of the country and adopt sensible gun laws that do not punish innocent people for nonviolent acts.