In the same decision that struck down New York’s astonishingly stupid and pointless law banning more than seven rounds in a magazine, the federal judge also struck down three provisions as unconstitutionally vague:
- A ban on “muzzle breaks”. (There is no such thing. The state contends that the law was supposed to say “muzzle brakes”, which actually exist. But we-meant-to-say-X-instead-of-Y is not an accepted principle of statutory construction.)
- A grammatically unintelligible provision limiting “large capacity” (i.e., normal capacity) magazines.
- A ban on “semiautomatic version[s] of an automatic rifle, shotgun or firearm”. (The bill offers no rules to determine what firearm is or is not a “version” of another, leaving ordinary people with no way to obey the law, and encouraging “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement” — which may well have been the point.)
One thing this does make clear (particularly the first and third) is that the people who wrote the bill had no idea what they were talking about.
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