There have been a few media stories going around showing that SAFE Act prosecutions have been on the rise, but a local NBC affiliate takes a look at the actual numbers, and it turns out most of the prosecutions are in New York City, and are for unlicensed handgun possession, a crime before the SAFE Act but which the SAFE Act raised from a misdemeanor to a felony.
There have been only 31 cases prosecuted in the entire state of New York for possession of an illegal assault weapon, and only 8 people charged with failure to register.
Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said her organization believes the statistics show the SAFE Act is being enforced uniformly, despite some of the charges being rarely used.
“You’re not going to have the State Police going door to door seeing if you have an AR-15 and if it’s registered,†Barrett said. “I don’t know, maybe that will start to happen, particularly if there’s a massacre using one of these weapons in the state.â€
Don’t for a minute believe these people aren’t in favor of a pervasive police state in order to accomplish their goals. The SAFE Act was never about public safety at all. It was about expressing disapproval for “those kinds of people,” and making them uncomfortable such that they’ll either move elsewhere, or become “better” people, you know, like downstate elites.
Criminals don’t bother with “assault weapons,” which is reflected in the fact that they are very very seldom used in crimes, and now reflected in the paltry number of cases prosecuted under New York State’s enhanced ban.
This does accomplish what the proponents wanted: to harass and discriminate against gun owners.
Wake up! This is a civil rights issue.
[I]t turns out most of the prosecutions are in New York City, and are for unlicensed handgun possession, a crime before the SAFE Act but which the SAFE Act raised from a misdemeanor to a felony.
Makes sense. From a prosecutor’s point of view, it wasn’t worth the trouble for a misdemeanor conviction, even on a slam-dunk case. From the mayor’s and city commissioners’ points of view, a misdemeanor doesn’t bring about a lifetime ban on gun ownership, so what’s the point?
But, raise the stakes to a felony, and it wouldn’t be the first time a prosecutor leveraged his/her “high felony conviction rate” during a run for higher office, or the first time a mayor/commissioner cited “getting illegal guns off the streets” in an effort to hold onto theirs.
Leah Gunn Barrett-“I don’t know, maybe that will start to happen, particularly if there’s a massacre using one of these weapons in the state.â€
Start going door to door and we shall see Leah….
Unless they object, we should elevate the 8 unlucky New Yorkers who were prosecuted for failure to register, as examples of the lunacy and injustice of gun control laws.
Word on the street in WNY was that at least one of those eight convictions was a guy the police had a multiplicity of good reasons for wanting to put him away. So it wasn’t even the case that they were looking to enforce this particular law, they just took advantage of the opportunity the SAFE Act afforded them.
Work has taken me away from NY state, and I’m happy to be someplace that understands and appreciates the Constitution.
There is evidence that the requirement that all transfers go through a dealer is being widely ignored.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/nics_firearm_checks_-_month_year_by_state_type.pdf
Last month in NYS, there were 27,287 handgun and long gun commercial NICS checks, and just 544 private transfer NICS checks. That means that just 544 / (27287 + 544) * 100 = 1.95% of NICS checks in the state were for private sales.
The estimates of the “private sales” market as a percentage range from a high of 40% to a low of 14%, so no matter how you cut it the vast majority of people are ignoring the requirement for a background check for private sales. I find it hard to believe that the private sales would drop to almost nothing.
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