Cold, dead hands: Buffalo to seize guns from families following owners' funerals     By Edmund DeMarche  Published November 13, 2014   FoxNews.com

                             

FILE 2012: Buffalo police confiscated nine illegal handguns in connection with a gun trafficking operation that stretched from the Decatur, Georgia area to Buffalo. The city has been focused on reducing the number of illegal guns on the street. (Buffalo Police Department)

A plan by police in Buffalo, N.Y., to begin confiscating the firearms of legal gun owners within days of their deaths is drawing fire from Second Amendment advocates.
The plan is legal under a longstanding, but rarely enforced state law, but gun rights advocates say, with apologies to onetime NRA spokesman Charlton Heston, it is tantamount to prying firearms - some of which may have substantial monetary or sentimental value - from the cold, dead hands of law-abiding citizens.

 

"They're quick to say they're going to take the guns," said Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. "But they don't tell you the law doesn't apply to long guns, or that these families can sell [their loved one's] pistol or apply to keep it."
King said enforcing the state law is the latest example of authorities targeting law-abiding gun owners, while doing little to secure the streets.

"They're quick to say they're going to take the guns."- Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association

Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derrenda said at a press conference last week that the department will be sending people to collect guns that belong to pistol permit holders who had died so "they don't end up in the wrong hands." The department will cross reference pistol permit holders with death records and the guns will be collected when possible, he said.

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