Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
A state Supreme Court justice has ordered the State Police to release data regarding the registration of newly defined assault weapons as required by the controversial NY SAFE Act gun control law.
"The long and short of it, in plain English, is that we won," said Paloma Capanna of Rochester, legal director of the Shooters Committee for Public Education.
A major part of the 2013 law — which Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed through a month after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings — calls for those who own grandfathered assault-style weapons to register them with the State Police. New sales of the weapons, characterized by military-style features like flash suppressors or pistol grips, were banned by the legislation.
Capanna sued on behalf of Rochester radio host Bill Robinson, who sought the data through a state Freedom of Information Law request.
She argued in state Supreme Court in Albany County that there was no reason the simple number of registrations should be kept secret.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Thomas McNamara's decision, dated April 30 and received by the plaintiff's counsel on Monday, directs the immediate release of 15 categories of information related to the state registry, including detailed geographic breakdowns (including by county and ZIP code) and the number of applications as opposed to actual registrations.
The newly defined assault weapons were supposed to be registered starting in April 2014. Despite several inquiries from the press and public, the State Police has never said how many weapons have actually been registered, saying the law exempted that data from public view. Second Amendment advocates contend the state is blocking the release of the information to hide a low rate of compliance by angry gun owners.
The plaintiff's FOIL was submitted on Jan. 27, 2014, and prompted a standard letter from a State Police Records Access Officer noting its receipt and promising another response within 20 days.
The State Police finally denied the request in December, arguing that the NY SAFE Act exempts from FOIL records "assembled or collected for purposes of inclusion" in the state database of registered weapons.
McNamara's decision, however, notes that those records were not among the 15 categories of data sought by the plaintiff's FOIL request.
"By the agency's own admission the records sought were neither assembled nor collected for 'inclusion' in the database but rather were 'derived' from records in the database," McNamara wrote. "Consequently, the exemption asserted by the agency does not apply to the records sought by petitioner and ... the records should be provided."
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Judge-says-State-Police-must-release-NY-SAFE-Act-6250184.php