A legal loophole is forcing New York prosecutors to drop charges against a slew of criminals caught with high-capacity gun magazines just like those used in Saturday’s supermarket slaughter in Buffalo, The Post has learned.
Albany pols, including a Buffalo lawmaker, introduced a bill to begin moving to close the legal glitch several days ago — before the mass murder of 10 black people by an alleged white supremacist.
State law bans magazines with capacities of more than 10 bullets, but a technicality in state law requires that prosecutors show whether it was made before or after 1994. But proving an illegally large magazine’s manufacture date is extremely hard, considering the lack of serial numbers and other tell-tale signs, prosecutors say.
“It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult to do,” Chris Horn, an assistant district attorney in Albany County, told The Post.
“If there’s no real information about the device, even though we all know it can handle ‘x’ number of bullets, we’re not going to be able to prove [when] it’s manufactured,” he said.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said the current law also has severely curbed its prosecutors’ ability to bring charges against suspects, with a rep noting that “numerous” raps involving illegal magazines have had to be dropped.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) proposed new legislation to close the loophole at the behest of the Brooklyn DA.
Addressing the legal issue will help keep dangerous criminals off the street and save lives, Horn said.
Gun magazines are devices that feed ammunition into a weapon. Many legal magazines are removable and easily replaced with illegal ones with higher capacities, as was the case in the Buffalo attack.
The legal loophole led Albany prosecutors just last week to drop a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree from a 2021 case — even though a witness testified it was clear that the magazine in question was almost assuredly illegal.
“When you look at it, it was hanging out the bottom … It was longer than it would normally be … Just by looking at at first glance, there was well in excess of 10 to 15 [ammunition rounds]. There was a lot more,” the witness stated in a legal document provided to the Post.
Hoylman — when asked by The Post about the chances of passing his bill before state lawmakers leave Albany for the year on June 2 — said, “We are going to have a lot of discussions about an appropriate legislative response once we learn more about the facts of [Saturday’s] heinous crime.”
Police responded to the Buffalo rampage about a minute after it had begun, but the multiple 30-round magazines reportedly used by the suspect, Payton Gendron of upstate Conklin, allowed him to shoot much more quickly than legal 10-round magazines.
Gendron, who reportedly posted an online racist manifesto before the shooting, legally purchased a semi-automatic Bushmaster XM-15, a weapon linked to other mass shootings.
Exactly where and when Gendron got high-capacity magazines remains unclear, though they can be legally purchased in Pennsylvania just miles from his hometown as well as on the Internet.
