New York State Police said they would release no information about whether gun owners are registering assault rifles grandfathered in for current owners but otherwise banned in New York. The weapons can be registered with the state police, must be re-registered every five years and cannot be sold or given away within the state. No new guns can be sold here. Palmateer said state police have estimated there are a minimum of hundreds of thousands of the assault rifles in New York, with others saying the total could be from 1.2 to 2 million. He said a similar law in Connecticut has produced a compliance rate of about 15 percent in a state with a population of 3.5 million, a small fraction of New York's 19.6 million residents. It's not clear how many assault rifles New Yorkers own. Some owners are modifying the weapons to comply with the new law. Gun manufacturers are also selling newly designed “New York-compliant” AR-10 and AR-15 assault rifles that are identical in most ways to the banned guns.
A week after the assault-weapon provisions in New York state’s new gun law took effect, opponents say they are confident most gun owners are either ignoring the law or making cosmetic modifications to weapons so they don't fall into the banned category, reports the Saratogian in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “We're talking hundreds of thousands of people who have not complied with this as a minimum,” said Jake Palmateer of the Second Amendment gun rights group NY2A. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo listed the SAFE Act last week as one of the most important laws ever passed in New York.