S0399 / A0199

Proposed NY State legislature bills S0399 and A0199 are a direct assault on your 2nd Amendment rights.  These bills amend “Section 1. Subdivision 1 of section 265.00 of the penal law…and a new subdivision 37 is added.” 

This is how the actual bill reads with the new proposed sections shown in bold and underlined.

Machine-gun" means a weapon of any description, irrespective of size, by whatever name known, loaded or unloaded, from which a number of shots or bullets may be rapidly or automatically discharged from a magazine with one continuous pull of the trigger and includes a sub-machine gun, and also includes any convertible pistol that is equipped with a pistol converter.”

“Convertible  pistol" means any semi-automatic pistol that can be converted into a machine-gun solely by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter.

Note how the second paragraph reads; “can be converted.”  It doesn’t say “has been converted.”  Gun control advocates will certainly read this as saying a firearm only has to have the ‘potential’ to be converted and not actually have been converted.  If you legally own a semi-automatic Glock, which can potentially be converted to automatic (a machine gun) by the use of a ‘Glock Switch,’ you would be in “possession of a convertible pistol” even though it has not been converted.

And if your semi-automatic pistol is another brand and not currently convertible, you are not off-the-hook. All it would take is for some inventor, in the future, to invent a pistol converter for your firearm for your gun to suddenly become illegal, even though you have done nothing to convert it.

Subdivision 10 of section 265.02 of the penal law, as added by chapter 1 of the laws of 2013 would be amended by these bills to read: A person is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree when…Such person knowingly possesses any pistol converter. 

S0399 had its 3rd Reading which means it is eligible for the Senate majority Leader to bring it to a vote.

A0199 is still in committee.

And all of this is unnecessary. 

The Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 prohibited civilian ownership or transfer of machine guns made after May 19, 1986.  All of these converted pistols would have been made after that date so a converted pistol is already illegal under existing law. 

But a pistol that is potentially convertible is not illegal under current law – and there’s the real reason for the proposed laws; to make all semi-automatics illegal because they are potentially convertible.

Under federal law, owning a machine gun manufactured before 5/19/1986 is legal.  But, the National Firearms Act of 1934, (which was enacted as part of the Internal Revenue Code), requires an extensive background check and paying a $200 tax when buying a machine gun manufactured before 5/19/1986. 

There are 13 states that have state laws banning possession of a machine gun even if you have the proper federal permit.  Guess which state is one of the 13? 

By the way, a pistol converter should not be confused with a Handgun conversion kit which can stabilize and fire your weapon like a rifle as opposed to being fired as a traditional handgun.