In January 2013, as the nation still mourned the Sandy Hook massacre, New York State enacted one of the nation’s strictest gun control laws. But three and a half years later, state records obtained after a lengthy court battle show that a key provision of the New York Safe Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act — mandatory registration of assault weapons — has been roundly ignored by gun owners in Ulster County and across the state.

The NY SAFE Act defines assault weapons as any rifle, pistol or shotgun that uses a detachable magazine and has one of a laundry list of “military features,” including flash suppressors, folding stocks, bayonet lugs and heat shields. The law banned new sales of assault weapons in the state and required current owners to register the firearms with state police.

In 2014, attorney and policy analyst Paloma Capanna filed suit on behalf of Rochester-based radio host Bill Robinson seeking data on NY SAFE Act compliance: specifically, how many assault weapons had actually been registered in the state.

Cuomo administration officials first ignored, then denied Robinson’s Freedom of Information Act request. But, on June 22, following two years of litigation, state police released the information based on a court decision which found that while the law forbade the disclosure of the actual registration forms, nothing precluded the release of aggregate data.

That data shows massive noncompliance with the assault weapon registration requirement. Based on an estimate from the National Shooting Sports Federation, about 1 million firearms in New York State meet the law’s assault-weapon criteria, but just 44,000 have been registered.

That’s a compliance rate of about 4 percent

. Capanna said that the high rate of noncompliance with the law could only be interpreted as a large-scale civil disobedience, given the high level of interest and concern about the law on the part of gun owners.



Opposition to the SAFE Act has been widespread across upstate New York, where 52 of the state’s 62 counties, including Ulster, have passed resolutions opposing the law. Upstate police agencies have also demonstrated a marked lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. According to statistics compiled by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, there have been just 11 arrests for failure to register an otherwise-legal assault weapon since the SAFE Act took effect in March 2013 and 62 for possession of a large capacity magazine. In Ulster County, where 463 assault weapons have been registered, there have been just three arrests for possession of large-capacity magazines and none for failure to register an assault weapon. Ulster County Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum has been a vocal critic of the law; he said he believed large numbers of Ulster County gun owners had chosen to ignore the registration requirement.

“We’re a rural county with a lot of gun enthusiasts,” said VanBlarcum. “So [463] sounds like a very low number.”

VanBlarcum said he had advised deputies to use their discretion when it came to making arrests for SAFE Act violations like unregistered assault weapons and he had no plans to undertake proactive enforcement measures.

“We are not actively out looking to enforce any aspect of the SAFE Act,” said VanBlarcum.

Capanna said the registration debacle pointed to bigger issues with the SAFE Act: while federal firearms laws and the bureaucracy that enforces them date back a century, New York was effectively trying to create an entirely new regulatory framework from scratch. Capanna pointed to a SAFE Act requirement for background checks on ammunition sales as an example of regulatory overreach. The mandate has gone unenforced because the federal database used to screen gun buyers cannot be legally used for any other purpose. The state, meanwhile, has failed to come up with its own database to track ammunition sales............

President Biden’s remarks last week on the three-year anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, shooting that saw a gunman kill 17 students and wound another 17, was seen by gun rights advocates as the administration’s first salvo in what is expected to be a fierce and prolonged battle over Second Amendment rights in America. “I am calling on Congress to enact common sense gun law reforms,” said Biden, “including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.”

“President Biden’s demand that Congress ban the modern sporting rifle (MSR), which he knowingly mislabels as an ‘assault rifle’ and ‘weapon of war,’ denies the reality that more murders are committed with knives, fists and clubs than all rifles combined,” responded the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s influential advocacy arm. “Over 20 million MSR’s are in circulation today, used daily for lawful purposes. And rolling back protections on lawful manufacturers of firearms would be akin to allowing activist lawyers to sue Ford for the wrongful deaths caused by drunk drivers.”

MSR’s are most commonly used for hunting, recreational target shooting and for personal protection. As a practical matter, these are semi-automatic firearms which means you must squeeze the trigger every time you want to fire a single round (the sale of fully automatic weapons was banned in 1986 as part of the Firearm Owners Protection Act). That functionality is no different than hundreds of other semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns used for everything from duck and dove to deer and boar hunting as well as target shooting and self-defense. Most U.S. soldiers, on the other hand, are issued fully automatic M4 Carbines capable of shooting 950 rounds per minute (press the trigger and the bullets keep flying), so while they may look like MSR’s, a military relegated to using semi-automatic rifles would be at a decided disadvantage in any modern warfare scenario. 

Gun control rhetoric from Dems is nothing new, but by holding slim majorities in the House and Senate and with Biden in the White House, they’re feeling emboldened that now is the time to move on a wide variety of gun control measures that had heretofore been stymied by a gun-friendly Trump administration and Republican majorities in at least one of two legislative bodies.

Mostly missing in the national political debate over guns, however, is where law enforcement stands regarding their willingness to enforce proposed or newly enacted gun laws.

As Colorado legislators discovered in 2019 and 2020 when ‘red flag’ legislation passed—designed to allow police to seize guns from people suspected of posing a significant danger to themselves or others—laws are meaningless without enforcement.........

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