NY SAFE Act Registration Numbers Are In – And They’re Pretty Embarrassing

ALBANY, NEW YORK — With continued pressure to hand over the total number of New Yorkers who registered their ‘assault weapons’ under Governor Cuomo’s NY SAFE Act, they’re finally available thanks to Rochester-area lawyer Paloma Capanna, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of radio host Bill Robinson.

As many speculated, the numbers are pretty low.

In total, 23,847 people have applied to register their firearms which are now, under the SAFE Act, classified as ‘assault weapons’.

Of those 23,847 people, they have collectively applied to register 44,485 firearms.

After the registration requirements, there were many calls on the citizens to ignore the new law. It seems that many listened.

There is no way to know the true number of ‘assault weapons’ in the State of New York, but estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands — and even upwards of one million. Even if we low-ball and say that New Yorkers own 200,000 newly classified ‘assault weapons’, that gives us less than a 25% compliance rate.

Anyone who owned a rifle that required registration was supposed to complete the registration with the State Police by the April 2014 deadline.

And somehow with these low numbers, I can still sleep at night knowing that over 75% of gun owners in NY with big scary black guns haven’t registered them. Huh.

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County breakdown

Here’s a county breakdown of the number of applications to registered newly defined assault-style weapons under the SAFE Act; for more data from the lawsuit, see the Capitol Confidential blog at http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol

In the greater Capital Region:

Albany 484

Columbia 124

Greene 113

Rensselaer 334

Saratoga 573

Schenectady 274

Schoharie 78

Warren 181

Statewide:

Allegany 83

Bronx 35

Broome 351

Cattaraugus 137

Cayuga 194

Chautauqua 311

Chemung 195

Chenango 116

Clinton 203

Cortland 97

Delaware 96

Dutchess 731

Erie 1,593

Essex 107

Franklin 113

Fulton 102

Genesee 131

Hamilton 21

Herkimer 140

Jefferson 291

Kings (Brooklyn) 54

Lewis 60

Livingston 128

Madison 160

Monroe 1,408

Montgomery 87

Nassau 2,755

New York (Manhattan) 1,640

Niagara 492

Oneida 451

Onondaga 916

Ontario 260

Orange 985

Orleans 87

Oswego 281

Otsego 126

Putnam 411

Queens 109

Richmond (Staten Island) 52

Rockland 451

Saint Lawrence 259

Schuyler 49

Seneca 69

Steuben 208

Suffolk 3,865

Sullivan 229

Tioga 122

Tompkins 134

Ulster 463

Washington 124

Wayne 244

Westchester 1,498

Wyoming 84

Yates 87

Source: New York State Police