You all remember when the New York State legislature rammed their draconian Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (SAFE Act) down the throats of New York gun owners during the irrational hysteria over the Sandy Hook shootings and the murder of some fire fighters in Webster, NY earlier this year. That law is scheduled to go into effect on January 15th, 2014, but that little detail hasn’t prevented New York from prosecuting citizens for violations of the Act before it’s actually a law according to Syracuse.com;
Nearly 1,000 people have been charged under the NY Safe Act in the eight months since the tougher gun control law was passed, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.
[…]
Take, for example, possession of a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.
Across the state, 20 people have been charged with this misdemeanor, according to data The Post-Standard and Syracuse Media Group requested from DCJS. That includes three people in Onondaga County, according to the stats.
[…]
Others interpret that part of the law differently. Certain large capacity magazines are now unlawful under the Safe Act, though owners have until Jan. 15 to get rid of them. And, people caught with a large magazine can have an extra 30 days to get rid of it to avoid the misdemeanor.
But, Onondaga County Chief Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coolican added: “That doesn’t mean that if I’m caught with one (now), I can’t be charged,” he said this week.
Then why even have an effective date for a law? It’s obvious to me that this law has nothing to do with “gun safety” and everything to do with gun owner control. It’s apparently being used to make otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. If I still lived in Onondaga County (around Syracuse), I’d be voting against a district attorney who prosecutes laws that don’t actually exist yet.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
The comments at that linked website are worth a read. The upstaters get it. As for the prosecutor, if he actually meant that it was okay to charge someone with violating a law not yet in effect, he ought to be charged with abusing prosecutorial discretion and malfeasance. Unfortunately, the one-line quote from him in the article may or may not be in context. I can’t tell.
We already are worried. What if I forget I have a few of my “work” magazines in my car and go to Syracuse to catch a plane or be picked up… Yeah. Is it now illegal to drive from Wheeler Sack Army Airfield across the street to the entrance to Fort Drum??? This is why I am glad I am retiring a few months after I get back.
Dose anyone besides me smell big, fat, expensive lawsuits in this?
I think I’d keep a box full of magazines in the back end of the car. I’d have a nice mix of Guns & Ammo, Field & Stream, Log Cabin Living, Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes & Garden, and Victorian Monthly, plus maybe a copy or two of Vogue (very high capacity) and Arabian Horse World (extremely high capacity) or AQHA Monthly (very high capacity).
You see, it’s that word: magazine. It can mean anything. 🙂
Ex-PH2: you ain’t seen a “high capacity magazine” of that type until you’ve seen a late 1980s/early 1990s “Computer Shopper”. Those were literally paper by the pound. (smile)
Hondo, it used to be you could say that about phone books.
There is no real comparison between paper copies and digital versions. As a friend of mine said, you can hold the copy in your hand, and turn pages one at a time. As much as I like the idea of digital stuff for its lower cost and the fact that it doesn’t go into landfill, it does not replace a print copy of anything. And anyway, recycling is a massive and lucrative industry now, so that argument (uses too many trees) doesn’t hold water any more.
Ex-PH2,
If you really want their heads to explode throw in a copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Azygos, while those don’t weigh a lot as printed, the volume of their message is loud, clear and heavily-armed.
Is it too early for puns?
Wait — Can’t that law be repealed by a state referendum? Or something?
The article says 20 people have been charged. I’m guessing it would have mentioned any convictions.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system.” Ayn Rand
My understanding of this law was that the entire rushed legislative process to enact it was already so suspect that this is just icing on the cake. I see about 1000 sets of charges getting dropped…
@10 There is no one with more reason to embrace violence than an innocent man wrongly branded a criminal by his government.
“The law is whatever I want it to say, dammit!”
Our ancestors would have been shooting by now.
@10 I’ve always liked this quote regarding government:
One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable,
@13. My turn. Our ancestors were shooting by now!