Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Binghamton Shootings - Police Error

In this story on CNN, Binghamton Police Chief Zikuski states that they are looking in to the suspects body armor, because only law enforcement officials are allowed to purchase it.

That is false. In NY state, it is legal to purchase, possess, and wear body armor. It is illegal to wear it while committing a crime. Which is stupid, since you already happen to be committing a crime, I'm going to go ahead and say you don't really care about the extra felony there.

From the NYS penal code:

Section 270.20 Unlawful wearing of a body vest
1. A person is guilty of the unlawful wearing of a body vest
when acting either alone or with one or more other persons he commits any
violent felony offense defined in section 70.02 while possessing a firearm,
rifle or shotgun and in the course of and in furtherance of such crime he wears
a body vest.

2. For the purposes of this section a
"body vest" means a bullet-resistant soft body armor providing, as a minimum
standard, the level of protection known as threat level I which shall mean at
least seven layers of bullet-resistant material providing protection from three
shots of one hundred fifty-eight grain lead ammunition fired from a .38 calibre
handgun at a velocity of eight hundred fifty feet per second.

The unlawful wearing of a body vest is a class E felony.

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