A Brooklyn politician drove upstate to buy an assault rifle equipped with a high-capacity magazine — then drove to The Bronx border yesterday to show how easy it would be to bring illegal weapons into the city.
While it’s against the law to sell or own such weapons and magazines in New York City, they can be legally purchased in other parts of the state.
“In light of the recent horrific massacre of innocent victims in Aurora, Colorado . . . it is quite evident that high-capacity weapons are a threat to the general public as well as law enforcement,” said state Sen. Eric Adams, vowing to introduce legislation that would ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines statewide.
“We display these lethal weapons on Broadway [in Yonkers, just outside the Bronx border] to keenly portray that this must be the final curtain call to the production and distribution of these high-capacity weapons,” added Adams, a former cop who co-founded the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.
Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes and Bronx DA Robert Johnson praised the proposed law.
Johnson said banning high-capacity magazines was as important as outlawing assault rifles.
Adams, he said, recognized “that the difference between the legal or illegal sale of high-capacity magazines is a county line.”
“We need to eliminate that difference,” he said.
Colorado’s accused “Dark Knight” gunman, James Holmes, 24, had a drum magazine for his AR-15 assault rifle that could hold 100 rounds of ammo.
Holmes also had a Remington 12-gauge shotgun and a Glock .40-caliber pistol that he used in his merciless rampage after the AR-15’s magazine jammed.