The article clarified my first question, which was whether this was NY City or NY State. It was the State.
At about 2:40 p.m., officials say Stolarczyk interrupted a man and woman burglarizing his home in Deerfield, New York, located about four hours north of New York City. Stolarczyk then shot the two suspects, according to police.
A handgun was used, according to the article.
Within New York City itself, it was common knowledge for just about everybody that ownership of a handgun was illegal, period. There may have been technical exceptions to this, but basiclaly the attitude was if you owned a handgun, you were either a criminal or a cop.
Rifles were OK, and deer hunting was prevalent "upstate." However, I understand that recently (10 years ago?) even rifles had to be registered by a new State law..
Throughout the rest of the State (including the eastern counties of Long Island), the laws were variable but generally less strict. Still, the "(hand)guns is bad" attitude had only somewhat percolated through the State anyhow. (As in your case, firearms information was not normally distributed.) I did know a person in Nassau County* who had a legitimate license to carry, but he was also a licensed private detective.
So I could understand that a handgun owner in the rest of the State might not realize that handguns had to be registered, especially if the gun had been obtained a long time ago.
Yeah, "four hours north of the city," would have been what we could call "flyover country" with respect to "urban sophistication" and I can understand someone owning either a handgun
or a rifle without realizing it needed registration.
Terry
* Quick geography. Long Island is a 120 mile long island ( :) ) only about the western third of which is in New York City proper. Brooklyn and Queens in the west are boroughs within the City. East of those are Nassau and Suffolk Counties, which are not in the City limits.
Map of NY State including Long Island:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Long_Island_location_map.svgWhere is Deerfield NY?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deerfield,_New_York