” Gun control advocates won a major victory Tuesday, but the fight over New York’s SAFE Act is far from over.
An appeal of Chief U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny’s decision upholding most of the new law is all but guaranteed.
And that appeal may come from supporters of the law, as well.
“ I think there’s going to be appeals on both sides,” said Brian T. Stapleton, a lawyer for the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the groups fighting the law.
Stapleton’s prediction is based on Skretny’s decision to uphold two key elements of the law, the state’s ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and his rejection of a third component, the seven-round limit for magazines.
The judge called the seven-round limit “tenuous, strained and unsupported.” “
” “People know that registration leads to confiscation,” said Jacob Rieper, a spokesman for the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, referring to the portion of the law that requires anyone possessing a military-style assault rifle on Jan. 15 register it by April 15.
Failure to do so is a misdemeanor. But Rieper and other gun-rights advocates predict many owners will run the risk, which may not be much of a gamble if their belief that local police, sheriffs and the state police will not go out of their way to aggressively enforce the law holds true.
“ The rank-and-file troopers don’t want anything to do with it,” state Assemblyman Bill Nojay, a Republican from suburban Rochester, said on Monday. “I don’t know of a single sheriff upstate who is going to enforce it.
“ If you don’t have the troopers and you don’t have the sheriffs, who have you got? You’ve got (Gov.) Andrew Cuomo pounding on the table in Albany,” Nojay said.”
Do Not Comply …
“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”
Thomas Jefferson
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