The New York SAFE act claims its first victim…kinda.
A 33-year-old man from western New York state is the first person to be charged under the state’s strict new gun law that was passed in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings….According to court documents, the sale included an AR-15, nearly 300 rounds of ammo and six magazines and an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle along with 31 rounds of ammo and one magazine.
During the investigation, prosecutors say, the undercover officer told Wassell that he or she was a convicted felon. Under the SAFE Act, it is illegal to sell an AR-10 to a felon….Prosecutors said they have an audio recording of Wassell allegedly telling the investigator, “this whole felony banned for life thing, it’s stupid.”
The AR-10 was treated as an assault weapon covered by the new gun law because it allegedly had a specific type of pistol grip.
Stings like this really reek of entrapment to me. He sold a gun to a police officer who made some cryptic statements about being a felon. He wasn’t a felon, and he’s allegedly an exempted individual so the sale actually was legal.
Also, yes the AR has a pistol grip…it has an inline stock, so it NEEDS one so the shooter can grip it. Now this case isn’t very clean, but do you feel any safer that this man is facing serious charges?
Of course also selling to a felon is a FEDERAL crime, not just a crime in New York.
So… wait. The sale of a firearm to a felon was already illegal under NY law. SAFE Act didn’t add that. It just made an already illegal act extra illegal by adding language (Section 898) that made all private sales of firearms illegal. The felon thing in this story is thus political window dressing designed to show how the law “is working” when a sale to a felon was illegal before, but (I guess) was too much work to bother trying to enforce. Golly, work is… work.
When the hardcore criminal gangs just start importing their guns along with their multi-ton shipments of drugs, then we’ll really see some &*(^$ because you can bet the Soviet-era Central American rifles they bring up won’t just be semi-autos.
So if he tried to steal a doughnut that was just sitting on the counter, but the doughnut was already paid for by a Good Samaritan who “pays it forward”, is it still considered stealing?
It sounds like they’re charging him with intent and … nothing else. As if “intent” were as bad as shooting up a bus full of preschoolers. He didn’t actually DO anything illegal.
And I’d like to know what else the cop said. Did he say he was from out-of-state? Because the guy is now required to sell the guns/magazines out-of-state, right?