More on lack of compliance with such laws.
Fewer than 45,000 assault-style weapons have been registered in New York state since a landmark gun control act took effect in 2013, state records released Tuesday show, suggesting that Empire State gun owners are largely ignoring one of the signature elements of the watershed legislation.
In the years since Gov. Cuomo signed the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the NY SAFE Act, a total of 23,847 people have applied to register their assault-style weapons with the state, according to statistics provided by the New York State Police...
...Law enforcement experts have estimated there could be nearly 1 million assault-style weapons in circulation across the state, suggesting that many New Yorkers are ignoring a central provision of what had been touted by gun control advocates as a milestone law.
nydailynews.com
Dan Haar: Untold Thousands Flout Gun Registration Law
February 10, 2014
Dan Haar
Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31.
But few thought the figures would be this bad.
By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in.
That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000.And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws. By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies.
articles.courant.com
California Gun Control Law Runs Into Rebellion By SETH MYDANS, Special to The New York Times Published: December 24, 1990 LOS ANGELES, Dec. 23— Nine days before the deadline, thousands of Californians are defying a ground-breaking state requirement that they register their military-style semiautomatic guns.
Many gun owners are calling their defiance an act of political protest in the tradition of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. "If civil disobedience was good enough for Dr. King, it's good enough for me," said Mike Wright, a member of Gun Owners React Committee, a private lobbying group.
Like other members of the group, he said he was refusing to register his weapon, a Colt AR-15, the assault weapon that was known as the M-16 during the Vietnam War.
As a one-year registration period draws toward an end on Dec. 31, only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered. This non-compliance has virtually nullified the first step of a March 1989 law that set the pattern for similar attempts to limit ownership of assault rifles in other states and in Washington.
In New Jersey, which passed a law last May that required such weapons to be rendered inoperable, surrendered or in some cases registered with the State Government within one year, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office said compliance has so far been "not exactly overwhelming." 'A Gun Owners' Revolt'.
nytimes.com
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