Many semi-auto rifle manufacturers have developed neutered versions of popular modern sporting rifles for our brothers in California, New York and New Jersey. Some of them have their flash hiders and bayonet lugs ground off, and some of them have ‘bullet-button’ magazine releases. Some of them have thumbhole stocks, or worse. Many of them are restricted to magazines of 10 rounds, instead of a normal 20 or 30.
None of these totalitarian-state compliant rifles (to my knowledge) have ever been used in the commission of a crime.
But all of them are still semi-automatic rifles, and they all cost real money for their manufacturers to develop and for their owners to purchase. Manufacturers and shooters spent extra money to develop and purchase these limited-run rifles, and justifiably relied on existing laws in the reasonable belief that they would be allowed to keep and use them. Now in NY they’re all contraband, thanks to a bill that most of the legislature didn’t even read.
But Andrew Cuomo doesn’t give a damn about that; he had to ‘do something’ and by God he was going to. And damn the cost. Or the Constitution.
And now every New York shooter who spent extra money purchasing a ‘NY-compliant’ rifle is, in industry parlance, SOL. As you read this, these (formerly) NY-compliant guns are probably ‘leaking’ out of the Empire State as fast as their owners can legally move with them to other states.