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Two years ago, there was no appetite for anyone in the state Senate to sponsor legislation criminalizing the use of body armor. <\/p>\n
There is now. <\/p>\n
Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, has introduced S.9407 in the state Senate to amend the state Penal Law to change the state\u2019s laws for body vests. A person would be guilty of unlawful wearing of a body vest while committing any misdemeanor or felony crime, regardless of the nature of the crime committed. <\/p>\n
The legislation was originally introduced in the state Assembly during the 2019-20 legislative session, but it never made it out of committee and companion legislation wasn\u2019t introduced in the state Senate. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of body vests by criminals emboldens them to commit crimes,\u201d<\/span> Kennedy wrote in his legislative justification. \u201cThis bill would deter the use of body vests since the penalty would run consecutively with the sentence for the underlying crime. Further, this bill would help protect law enforcement officers since it would discourage the use of body vests in all crimes \u2014 not just violent felonies committed while using firearms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n State law currently only prohibits wearing of body vests to those committing a violent felony with a firearm, rifle or shotgun. <\/p>\n But it does indicate a level of planning. Body armor was mentioned more than a dozen times in the online writings attributed to the white suspect in the Buffalo shooting, Payton Gendron, who was arrested at the supermarket and has pleaded not guilty to murder.<\/p>\n According to the Associated Press, at least 21 mass shooters over the last four decades have worn some kind of body armor \u2014 and the majority of those were within the last 10 years, according to a database maintained by The Violence Project, a nonpartisan research group that tracks gun violence.<\/p>\n Among them: A massacre that killed 12 people and injured dozens more at a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012, and another in nearby Boulder that left 10 people dead at a supermarket last year. The shooter in Texas\u2019s deadliest mass slaying was also wearing protective gear when he killed more than two dozen people at a church in 2017, as was a radicalized Islamic couple who carried out a terror attack in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.<\/p>\n The Violence Project database doesn\u2019t show a clear correlation with body armor and the number of victims. But such gear can enable attackers to shoot longer and is a symbolic way to adhere to societal expectations of what a mass shooting looks like, said James Densley, a criminal justice professor at Metro State University in Minnesota who co-founded The Violence Project.<\/p>\n \u201cA mass shooting is intended to be a final act \u2014 you don\u2019t get away with a mass shooting,\u201d<\/span> Densley said. \u201cSo it\u2019s meant to be a big spectacle, and it\u2019s meant to have people pay attention and to notice it. One of the ways you do that is you dress up pretending you\u2019re in the military.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Getting body armor isn\u2019t difficult under U.S. laws. It\u2019s illegal under federal law for a convicted felon to buy body armor, but other than that there are few restrictions on purchasing it. Only one state blocks it from being ordered online and shipped to homes: Connecticut, which requires a face-to-face purchase.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of those same laws apply to guns,\u201d<\/span> Chris Burbank, the former police chief in Salt Lake City who\u2019s now with the Center for Policing Equity, told the Associated Press recently. \u201cDoes that prohibit anyone in this nation from having access to a firearm?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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