New Gun Laws Make Owning .39 Caliber Rifles In NYC Harder Than Ever

"Peguy Desir, a 28-year-old Manhattan gun runner, sold NYPD undercover cops 83 guns during a year-long sting operation, police said.

Until the new law was passed, he only faced a slap on the wrist for allegedly supplying dangerous criminals with handguns.

Under the new legislation, he faces more jail time for a single gun sale than he had faced for three prior busts combined.

The law changed the crime from a Class D to a Class C felony. Albany passed the changes last June. When Gov. Pataki signed the legislation into law last November, penalties jumped from one to seven years for a loaded weapon to a minimum of 3-1/2 years to a maximum of 15 years.

Gunmen with prior felonies faced even stiffer sentences.

Desir's case straddles the recent change in the law.

Cops say he would sell heroin and crack cocaine down South, then turn around and use the profits to buy guns.

Undercover cops began buying guns from Desir in January 2006. "It started slowly, but by the end of the operation we were buying guns off of him every couple of weeks," Acri said.

The old gun laws were in place in March 2006, when undercover cops bought a .45-caliber Hi-Point and a .45-caliber Llama, both loaded, and an unloaded 9-mm.Hi-Point from the crew, police said.

If convicted, Desir could get off with just a year for each of those loaded guns.

But eight months later, and five days into the law gun laws, cops bought a machine pistol 9-mm.Kel-Tec. That one sale carries the possibility of more time in jail than the three guns purchased in March.

The haul included an array of semi-automatic pistols and even a .39-caliber Soviet MK99 semi-automatic rifle..."

Yeah, the new laws mean stiffer penalties and that was like pulling teeth because NYC loves going after white southerners but detests sending homegrown black felons to jail.

Someone be a real pal and help me out here. I wasn't aware that Kel-Tec offered a machine pistol in 9mm, or as they call it, a 9mm.Kel-Tec. Machine pistols are of course full-auto submachine guns in the form of a handgun, and am dumbfounded that the old Soviet MK99 was a .39 caliber. Silly me. I thought it was chambered for 7.62X39 millimeter. I've no idea what a 9mm.Hi-Point is. Might very well be a 9mm Hi-Point, but the period has me thinking I'm wrong because I'm certainly not an accredited journalist and should defer to their wisdom.