State gun law kicks in this week

Several key measures of New York’s tough new gun law kicked in on April 15, with owners of firearms that are now reclassified as assault weapons required to t register their firearms and new limits on the number of bullets allowed in automatic and semi-automatic magazines.

As the new provisions took effect, a spokesman for New York’s affiliate of the National Rifle Association said that he planned to file a court request for a federal injunction to immediate halt to the magazine limit.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls those and other provisions in the state’s new gun law common sense, while dismissing criticisms he says come from “extreme fringe conservatives” who claim the government has no right to regulate guns.

“Yes, they are against it, but they are the extremists and the extremists shouldn’t win, especially on this issue when it is so important to the majority,” Cuomo said in a radio interview last week. “In politics, we have to be willing to take on the extremists, otherwise you will see paralysis.”

New York’s new gun restrictions, the first in the nation passed following December’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, limit state gun owners to no more than seven bullets in magazines, except at competitions or firing ranges.

The new regulations in New York commence as the U.S. Senate prepares to debate expanded gun legislation and weeks after Connecticut joined Colorado in signing into law tougher new gun restrictions.

The New York State Police posted forms Monday on its website for registration, which can be filed electronically. Owners of those guns, now banned from in-state sales, are required within a year to register them. Alternatively, they can legally sell them to a licensed dealer or out of state by next Jan. 15.

The toughest part of the new statute — banning in-state sales of those guns newly classified as “assault weapons” — immediately took effect Jan. 15. The new classification related to a single military-style feature, such as a pistol grip on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. Other listed features include a folding or thumbhole stock, bayonet mount, flash suppressor, or second protruding grip held by the non-trigger hand.

It requires owners to register an estimated 1 million guns previously not classified as assault weapons by April 15, 2014, though law enforcement officials acknowledge they don’t know exactly how many such guns New Yorkers have.

The assault weapon definition also applies to some shotguns and handguns. They include shotguns that are semi-automatic, or self-loading, and have another feature, such as a folding stock, a second handgrip held by the non-shooting hand or the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

Also covered are semi-automatic pistols that can take detachable magazines and have another feature, such as a folding or thumbhole stock, a second handgrip and a threaded barrel that can accept a silencer.

Passed Jan. 15, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the statute originally banned magazines with more than seven bullets effective April 15. Connecticut officials said that shooter Adam Lanza used a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 and five 30-round magazines to kill 20 children and six adults in minutes.

However, acknowledging that manufacturers don’t make seven-bullet magazines, the Cuomo administration and New York lawmakers amended their law on March 29, keeping 10-bullet magazines legal but generally illegal to load them with more than seven bullets.

The statute restates the ban on magazines with capacity to hold more than 10 bullets, while adding also banning those that were grandfathered in under the old law.