Judge Allows Challenge to New York 'Assault Weapon' Ban to Proceed

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas sided with the individuals challenging the state of New York's "assault weapon" ban, allowing the case to go forward. The challenge was filed in December of 2022 and claims the law "infringe(s) the right of law-abiding, peaceful citizens to keep and bear commonly possessed firearms..."

Attorneys for New York officials filed a motion in the Southern District of New York to dismiss the complaint in May, arguing that the court does not have the jurisdiction to address the plaintiffs’ claims. The state officials’ legal team said the individuals “fail to establish that any injury-in-fact is traceable to the assault weapons ban” because they do not say they hold a license required to buy a semiautomatic rifle.
Karas dismissed the defendants’ arguments in the ruling.
“While there may be serious questions about Plaintiffs’ exemption argument, the Court need not address that question here because Plaintiffs adequately allege standing under Defendants’ interpretation of the statute,” Karas wrote.
“Put simply, Defendants have failed to explain how invalidating the Assault Weapons Ban would have no effect on the ability to obtain licenses for those same weapons,” Karas added later in the ruling.

A similar law was recently upheld by another court in Massachusetts.

There are several practical problems with the New York law, as there often are when gun laws are drafted, voted on, and passed into law by people who know nothing about firearms. Here is how New York defines an "assault weapon;" in the interest of brevity, let's just examine the section on rifles:

“‘Assault weapon means a semiautomatic rifle that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following characteristics: (1) a folding or telescoping stock; (2) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon; (3) a thumbhole stock; (4) a second handgrip or protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (5) a bayonet mount; (6) a flash suppressor or muzzle break or muzzle compensator or a threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor or muzzle break or muzzle compensator; or (7) a grenade launcher.”

One by one:

It's possible one could make an argument that a folding or telescoping stock would make the gun easier to conceal; although a criminal bent on mischief could, in the case of many semi-auto rifles (like, say, the AK series), attain concealability with the simple application of a hacksaw.
A pistol grip that protrudes beneath the weapon contributes precisely nothing to the concealability, power level, or effectiveness of the weapon. Some people prefer them on an ergonomic basis; others (me) do not.
A thumbhole stock is actually bulkier and heavier than a standard stock; this is in place, it's safe to assume, because the same "pistol grip" criterion in the 1994 federal assault weapons law was circumvented by many manufacturers who provided clunky, bulky thumbhole stocks.
See #2.
A bayonet mount? Seriously? This is, what, to reduce the incidents of bayonet charges by gangs of criminals that plague the streets of New York?
A flash suppressor does nothing to reduce the firing signature of the weapon, which is generally the argument given for banning it. The purpose of these is to protect the shooter from being blinded by muzzle flash in low-light conditions.
Grenade launchers are already regulated — heavily — by the 1934 National Firearms Act. Presumably, the state of New York is referring to flare launchers; if so, this is just careless wording and essentially meaningless, especially as the use of these in crimes in the United States is so insignificant that I wasn't even able to find numbers for it.

As an illustration of just how ridiculous these laws are, one needs look no further than the Winchester 100. This is a semi-auto rifle with a detachable box magazine that has none of the attributes listed above — and which is functionally identical to an AR- or AK-pattern rifle. It operates precisely the same way, has the same rate of fire, and uses a more powerful cartridge than most "assault rifles" but is not black, scary, and lacks, among other things, a bayonet lug. Granted, the Winchester 100 was sold with a 5-round magazine, but magazines are pretty simple items, and fabricating one for a Winchester 100 or a similar rifle, like the Remington 742, would be easy to do.

New York's law would, in a just world, be overturned, not only because it is an illegal infringement on the Second Amendment rights of the people of New York, not only because it contradicts the Supreme Court's Bruen decision, but because it's a stupid, nonsensical law that will only affect law-abiding citizens while having zero effect on crime, which will go on, even at the mass-attack level, even if every firearm on the planet were to magically disappear.

Honestly. A bayonet lug. And these people expect to be taken seriously.