Tag Archives: Rochester

Two months ago, you may recall,
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
won the race to enact new gun restrictions following the Sandy
Hook massacre, beating every other opportunistic, grandstanding
politician in the country by signing a bill that was passed so fast
legislators had no time to read it. One consequence of that
unseemly haste, I
noted a few days later, was that legislators forgot to exempt
current and retired police officers from the new rule for
magazines, which reduced the maximum number of rounds from 10 to
seven (because, as Cuomo
explained, “nobody needs 10 bullets to kill a deer”). The
ensuing outrage at the lack of a double standard revealed not only
that cops take their special rights for granted but also that they
do not believe the magazine limit—which they support for “regular
citizens”—will have any impact on criminals. Now Cuomo has
noticed another problem: Before imposing his arbitrary
ammunition limit, he did not bother to check on the availability of
seven-round magazines. It turns out “there is no such thing as a
seven-bullet magazine,” he said at a press conference yesterday.
“That doesn’t exist. So you really have no practical option.”
That’s a slight exaggeration. Seven-round magazines
do exist, just as three-wheeled cars exist, but they are not
standard. Last month the Rochester ;Democrat and
Chronicle
noted that “gun manufacturers have not had much reason to make
a magazine with fewer than 10 rounds, except for limited uses,
because no state required it until now.” Based on interviews with
gun dealers, the paper reported that “there are no manufacturers
planning to make special seven-round magazines to serve the New
York market.” The new magazine limit takes effect on April 15.
The governor’s solution: change the law so that people are once
again allowed to buy 10-round magazines but make it illegal to put
more than seven rounds in them. I swear I am not making that up; it
is already the rule for previously owned 10-round magazines, which
are legal as long as they contain seven or fewer rounds. Putting in
that eighth round is a violation punishable
by a $200 fine for the first offense and a Class B misdemeanor,
punishable by up to six months in jail, for a second offense if the
magazine stays in your home; if you walk outside with it, that
eighth round could cost you up to six months in jail for the first
offense and up to a year for the second.
Richard M. Aborn, president of the ;Citizens Crime
Commission of New York City, objects to Cuomo’s proposed
accommodation. “I think the governor and the Legislature got it
right the first time,” he
tells The New York Times. “We don’t want to have to
tell the mother of a young man who’s just been shot and killed that
he was killed with the ninth bullet.”
Stephen J. Aldstadt, president of ;the Shooters Committee on
Political Education, also perceives a flaw in Cuomo’s proposal,
which he calls “the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard.” ;But
Aldstadt’s objection is somewhat different from Aborn’s. “Any
person who is going to go commit a mass shooting like Columbine or
Sandy Hook is certainly not going to pay attention to a law
restricting magazines to seven rounds,” he said. “The only people
who would possibly obey that law are legal gun owners, and they’re
not your problem.”
As I
wrote in January:

It is implausible enough to suggest that a criminal—who by
definition has no compunction about breaking the law, who is not
legally permitted to possess firearms to begin with (if he has a
felony record), and who is highly motivated to obtain the tools of
his trade—would be deterred from obtaining a 10-round magazine by
the legislature’s new dictate, especially since plenty of them will
remain in circulation. ;It is beyond fanciful to suppose that,
having obtained a 10-round magazine, a criminal would think twice
about putting more than seven rounds in it because legislators said
he shouldn’t. ;

But this is the sort of magical thinking that passes for
reasoning among advocates of
sensible, common-sense gun control. … Read More