There are some significant changes due to take effect early next month in the Empire State.
New York is switching from a jurisdiction in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducts firearms-related NICS background checks, to one in which the New York State Police will conduct all firearm and ammunition-related background checks using both NICS and a pending “statewide license and record database.” This shift is occurring due to legislation enacted last year, NY Exec. Law § 228, which authorizes the state police to act as the “point of contact” for background checks required under “18 U.S.C. sec. 922(t), all federal regulations and applicable guidelines adopted pursuant thereto, and the national instant criminal background check system for the purchase of firearms and ammunition.”
That law directs the Superintendent of State Police to establish a “centralized bureau” for firearm and ammunition background checks. NY Exec. Law § 228(7) specifies that, within 60 days of July 15, 2023, the superintendent must “notify each licensed dealer holding a permit to sell firearms” to submit requests for background checks to the state police, which appears to be an indirect way of setting a deadline of September 13 (the date the 60-day period expires) for the system to be operational.
Section § 228(5) allows the state to charge fees for background checks using this state database, which fees cannot “exceed the total amount of direct and indirect costs incurred by the bureau in performing such background check.” One source indicates that these fees will add an additional $9 (firearms) and $2.50 (ammunition) to purchases and transfers.
The shift to a state “point of contact” jurisdiction occurs in tandem with a second change, a related but separate development under a state law that mandates background checks for ammunition transfers by “sellers of ammunition.” This background check requirement dates back to the SAFE Act of 2013 and requires that a state database for ammunition background checks be used (federal law, 28 C.F.R. 25.6, limits the use of the NICS system for checks “only in connection with a proposed firearm transfer as required by the Brady Act. FFLs are strictly prohibited from initiating a NICS background check for any other purpose”).
This ammunition background check requirement comes with a statutory precondition and grace period before it may take effect. Specifically, the state police superintendent must first “certify” that “the statewide license and record database established pursuant to [NY Penal Law § 400.02] and the statewide license and record database established for ammunition sales are operational,” followed by a 30-day period after which the ammunition background check requirement is in effect. In a classic example of the New York’s legislature’s signature style of “pass gun control laws first, figure out if they work later,” it became apparent once the SAFE Act was passed that the ammunition background check mandate was unachievable at the time. The-then police superintendent advised that his agency lacked the technology to implement the requirement and had “no idea when ammunition background checks… will begin across the state.”
A further complication is that the entire ammunition background check database project was placed in abeyance due to a 2015 memorandum of understanding (MOU). The agreement, entered into by the Cuomo Administration and then-Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, promised that no state money would be spent on implementing the ammunition background check database until a cost plan had been approved by the parties. The MOU further stipulated that any certification of the database as operational would not be made until the parties had approved a plan on its implementation. Last year, however, Governor Kathy Hochul indicated she was aware of the “old MOU that was signed related to ammunition sales after laws were passed the decade ago, it was an administration document between the prior administration and the Senate Republicans,” but decided to ignore it – “we are literally tearing it up and New York will now require and conduct background checks for all ammunition purchases.”
There is no indication on either the state police or the governor’s websites that the certification of the statewide license and record database as operational has occurred. However, the NY State Police website currently advises that the “background check requirements imposed on all retail sellers of ammunition are scheduled to take effect on September 13, 2023.”
I’ve warned you guys. Weird things happen in gunfights. You should expect an Elbonian satellite to fall on your head, or a gopher the size of a grizzly to erupt from the ground at your feet. I’ve encouraged you to believe your eyes, shrug off bizarre twists, and stay focused on the threat. Some of you shared your own stories of bizarre “moments ’midst mayhem,” and a whole bunch of you asked for real-world examples. A few readers were even dubious about the possibility of such strange happenings happenin’. So, for you doubting Thomases, here are some examples from my private stock.
NUCLEAR .38 SPECIAL ROUNDS?
I was a rookie patrolman when my senior partner and I were called to back up a pair of robbery detectives. They planned to kick in a door at a felon-filled flophouse hotel, crunch some cockroaches and yank a sleepy stickup-shooting suspect outta his grimy sheets. His room was on the second floor of this converted century-old residence, and a rickety stairway led directly from his crib down to a garbage-littered lot. That’s where Davey and I were posted — just in case Plan A went South when the “dicks” kicked the front door. It did.
We weren’t quite “positioned” when multiple muffled gunshots preceded Hairball Harry’s rapid exit out onto the landing. There was a flash of light as the door banged hard against the rail, and both Davey and I thought it was a muzzle flash and gunshot. Davey was standing in front of me with his trusty 6″ S&W Model 10 aimed at Harry. He squeezed (or jerked) the trigger — and the stairway landing seemed to explode, with a hurricane of splinters and dust billowing out toward us as simultaneously, the entire stairway screeched, groaned, and collapsed to the deck.
I pushed past Davey when a second after that, a ground-floor back door flew open and two skivvie-clad bed-headed dudes with pistols in their mitts staggered outside, blinded by the clouds of dust, shouting stuff like “COPS! They’re usin’ grenades!” and searching for targets. Using some ungentlemanly language, I convinced ’em of the inferiority of their tactical situation. Good thing they didn’t fight — my partner was still standing there, frozen, with his revolver a hand’s-breadth from his nose, staring incredulously at the muzzle. He was lost in his own world, wondering how a lead 158 gr. SWC could blow up a stairway and two landings. Finally, I had to grab the gun and gently awaken him.
The gunshots were Hairball Harry’s response to his door gettin’ kicked. The dicks had sidestepped, and were occupied with straightening out a pair of pucker-factor-induced “wedgies.” That flash was the bulb of an outside light’s last gasp as its fuse blew out. The once-heavy wooden beams and planks of that stairway were virtually hollow shells filled with a century’s worth of termites and wood-powder. It simply imploded under Harry’s weight. He was unconscious, suffering multiple injuries, snoozin’ in the wreckage.
The Big Diff between me an’ Davey was that previous combat experience had taught me stuff blows up and weird things happen in gunfights, and you have to keep your head in the game.
ALLEYWAY ANTICS
A patrolman pal of mine had an armed dope dealer cornered in an inky-black blind alley. They were casually trading occasional shots, waitin’ for backup to arrive, when suddenly a huge supernova light came on, a door swung open, and the alley was instantly filled with laughing, leaping, twirling cheerleaders, complete with pompoms, ponytails, big bells on their shoes and those cute little kick-skirts. Dudes! Wanna talk weird here? The entire pep-an’-cheer outfit from a local college had just finished a late photo-session on a theatre stage. The best part? As the cheerleaders danced an’ advanced down the alley past my pal, the dope-dealer tried to sneak out with ’em!
“Unbelievable,” my buddy told me; “Here’s this dreadlocked dude wearing a Rastafarian cap and a filthy M-65 (field jacket), skipping along between cheerleaders, still holding a Beretta 92 in one hand. Skipping!” Rasta-man didn’t get away, and nobody got hurt, but my pal said it was an ugly scene. “The shrieking and screaming hurt my ears worse than the gunshots did,” he said. “Never jump out from behind a dumpster and point a pistol anywhere near a buncha cheerleaders.”
DON’T SHOOT WHITEY: HE’S MINE!
“Tommy D,” another badge-wearing brother, is well known for his morbid fear of dogs. They tend to bite him, fiercely and frequently. He had chased a biker bad guy into the back yard and the two were faced off pointing pistols at each other, when outta the shadows waddled an irritated overweight Welsh Corgi, who commenced chewing Tommy’s ankle.
Distracted but undaunted, Tommy and Biker Bill continued discussing whom oughtta throw down whose howitzer when suddenly, a little white Pit Bull pup ran between Biker Bill’s legs and skidded to a snarling stop in front of Tommy. That’s when I arrived — just in time to slap leather and watch in horror as T.D.’s eyes saucered and his shaking gun dropped to point at the Pit Bull!
I was a half-second short of blasting Biker Bill when he flung his gun to the grass and screamed, “Don’t shoot Whitey! He’s mine!” I’ll leave the detailed analysis to you guys. Just watch out for grizzly-gophers and Elbonian satellites, okay?
Categories
Maybe someday?
32
The mechanism really doesn’t make all that much difference, the end result is the same.
It really doesn’t matter what you did. By this point, none of that really matters. Once these gears start turning there is no stopping them.
Nobody has to think about anything — and that’s intentional. There is a big book, and at each stage of the operation those tasked with its execution need only turn to the appropriate page and do what it says. It helps absolve those who must undertake this macabre operation of any undue moral responsibility. They were just doing what the book directed.
Twenty-four hours in advance, the prison SWAT team reports to your cell to move you to the observation area. You can walk along with them peacefully or not, but they will move you.
The observation cell has entire wall constructed of nothing but bars. It’s here where you take your last meal. The prison makes every reasonable effort to accommodate this request. Some poor guy sits and stares at you for the full 24 hours. This is to keep you from killing yourself. The government will not be denied.
A few hours before the big event, the SWAT team shows up again, this time to move you from the holding area to the place of execution. There is a series of stone steps leading down to the death room. As I walked down these steps, I couldn’t help but imagine what it might feel like to do this for real.
Two walls are one-way glass, one window is for government witnesses and the other is for the victim’s family. The inside is covered with acoustic soundproofing. The ceiling is formed from those banal institutional ceiling tiles, but more on those in a minute.
Once in the room, the SWAT team ensures you stretch out peaceably on the table. There are extensions for your arms. The table looks like a cross, and the thing is festooned with straps. Your arms, legs, torso and head are securely affixed. There can be a little movement but not much. I assumed the position. This may seem unduly dark, but I wanted to know how it might feel.
Paramedics then start a large bore IV in each arm. Physicians are intentionally excluded from the process as this would be such an egregious violation of the Hippocratic Oath. The IV lines run through a pair of innocuous-looking holes in the wall. And then you wait.
This is the lethal injection room at San Quentin (Ca.) Penitentiary.
Mine was a bit different. (Source: Wikipedia)
There is a bank of five identical telephones with sequential phone numbers standing side by side. Should there be a last-minute stay there is no way word won’t get there in time. On the other side of the wall are two little closets. Inside each closet is a handcrafted wooden contraption to hold the mystical elixir affixed to each IV line. One is normal saline, the other is something else. On the wall is also a pair of lights, one red and the other green.
Meanwhile, the subject of this exercise stares at those accursed ceiling tiles. Think back to the last time you were enduring some ghastly dental procedure or other. It’s like that, but much worse.
There is a little microphone hanging down from the ceiling; a tiny corner of one tile carved away to accommodate its cord. At the appointed time the warden enters the room and reads the charges against you. The condemned then has three minutes to say anything they want. The warden actually has a stopwatch. At the end of three minutes the warden turns and leaves whether you are still speaking or not. When you die, you die alone.
Gravity is ultimately the engine behind this enterprise. The IV bottles sit inverted in their holders. The executioners enter their closets and wait for the lights. When the lights change, they each flip the bottles upright and leave, never seeing the object of the exercise. This is by design.
As I lay on that hard table, technically padded but only just, I was so viscerally struck by those ceiling tiles. They’re the last thing one sees. It doesn’t matter what a heartless bloodthirsty monster you might be, the process of bringing you to this point will invariably break you. You have absolutely no control over anything.
Our actions have consequences, and this is a really big one. The ponderous machinations of the legal system tend to separate cause and effect substantially in situations of such exceptional gravitas. However, Lady Justice is a cold-hearted lass. She ultimately extracts her due.
Top: Webley Mark VI .455. Bottom: Enfield No. 2 .38.
The British have never been ones to march in lockstep with the rest of the world, and a little evidence of that is their choice of handguns in World War II. While most of the world’s major military forces had by that time converted to one sort or another of autoloader, the British decided to stick with revolvers.
Mostly they used four types of double action revolver, although in 1940 the British government even bought some Colt Single Action Army revolvers to help arm their home guard. (Today collectors refer to those as “Battle of Britain” guns.) Issued to regular British forces, however, were their domesticly manufactured Enfield No. 2 .38 and Webley Mark VI .455. The Webley Mark VI .455 had been adopted in 1916, and although it had been officially replaced about 1928 by the Enfield No. 2 .38, it was still in common use.
Top: S&W Hand Ejector No. 2 .455. Bottom: S&W Military & Police .38.
Not having enough of either Webley or Enfield to go around, they also bought many thousands of S&W K-frame Military & Police revolvers chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge. And furthermore, they still had and consequently used many S&W N-frame (Hand Ejector 2nd Models) which they had purchased from 1915 to1917 for World War I.
Duke’s S&W Hand Ejector #2 .455 factory letters to the Canadian Government in 1916.
Left to Right: .38 S&W with 190 gr. lead RN, .455 Webley Fiocchi load with 262 gr. lead RN bullet and .45 ACP Black Hills load with 230 gr. FMJ bullet.
Their choice of cartridges for these revolvers also seems strange. The .455 Webley had been with them since the 1870s as a black powder cartridge, but their Mark II version of it introduced about 1897 was loaded with smokeless propellant. By American standards, it would be considered “barely loaded.” That’s because it was rated with 265 gr. bullet at only about 600 fps. In the 1920s the British military determined a .38 caliber 200 grain bullet at about 630 fps gave about the same muzzle energy, and that’s what they converted to. Actually the case they chose to use was a twin to the .38 S&W round. That company had been chambering guns for it since the early 1870s, so when the Brits needed S&W to help them out with revolvers in the 1940s.
I’ve been told by a knowledgeable shooter/collector that prior to WWII the Brits had to reduce bullet weight on their .38s to 178 grains in order to make them full metal jacketed. Otherwise they would have been in violation to the Geneva Convention.
The Brit .38s and .455s barely dented. The big caved-in spot was done with a .45 ACP.
No Common Sense
For some strange reason, probably related to my lack of common sense, my gun trading forays these last few years have netted me samples of the four above mentioned British military revolvers. Two have some minor noteworthiness. The Enfield No. 2 .38 is marked “RAF” (Royal Air Force) and “1936,” while the S&W .455 factory letters to the Canadian government in 1916. I was even able to find a 12-round box of FMJ .455 military loads of Canadian manufacture dated 1943 to go with it. British military .38 loads have evaded me completely. For shooting I bought some of the Fiocchi .455 Webley factory loads with a 262-gr. lead bullet and handloaded some Lyman #358430 cast bullets weighing 190 gr. in the .38. Powder charge was only 2.2 grains of Bullseye. The Fiocchi .455s chronographed at 619 fps, and my .38 handloads were 10 fps faster.
So did I “test-fire” these revolvers for accuracy as any self-respecting gun’riter would do? No way. What I did was spent nine bucks at an Army surplus store for an old GI issue steel helmet. Then I set it on a fence post and fired my British WWII revolvers at it from 10 paces. The .38s wouldn’t have even given its wearer a headache. They didn’t dent it and hardly made it wobble. The .455s did dent it and it wobbled some. Admittedly these were lead bullets and not military FMJs, which might have given more penetration. For comparison, I fired a 230 grain FMJ .45 ACP factory load from a Colt 1917 revolver. It didn’t penetrate either but caved in the side of the helmet, and not only knocked it off the fence post but rolled it 20 yards down the road!
Somebody probably knows why the Brits stuck to revolvers in the years leading up to WWII, and even perhaps why they liked such pee-dunkler cartridges — I don’t. But they’re still interesting handguns, albeit only minor historical footnotes to WWII.