Responding to Supreme Court Ruling, Governor Falsely Claims Buffalo Supermarket Killer Used Replacement Stock

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — About an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on bump stocks, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul falsely said a gunman who carried out a racist massacre in his hometown of Buffalo used the weapon accessory that can allow semi-automatic rifles to fire as fast as a machine gun.

Hochul, a Democrat, made the error first in a statement emailed to media outlets and posted Friday on a state website, then later in a post on X that has since been deleted.

She falsely said the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022 used replacement stock. In the shooting, the shooter modified a legally purchased semi-automatic rifle so he could use illegal high-capacity ammunition magazines, but he did not use a stock to make the weapon fire at a faster rate.

“Exactly one month ago, we marked the anniversary of the deadly Buffalo Massacre – the horrific day when a gunman fueled by hatred murdered ten of our neighbors, using a stock to transform his firearm into a even deadlier weapon,” Hochul’s emailed statement said. She added that the Supreme Court's decision was “a sad day for families who have lost loved ones in mass shootings.”

His now-deleted post on X said “a man using a bumpstock killed 10 of our neighbors in Buffalo.”

Asked by The Associated Press about the error, a spokeswoman for the governor, Maggie Halley, emailed a statement saying Hochul “intended to speak out broadly against dangerous and illegal weapon modifications.” which have no civilian purpose and are intended to inflict mass casualties, such as replacement stocks and magazine modifications.

The Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on bump stocks put in place after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, when a man in Las Vegas attacked a music festival with rifles equipped with bump stocks of shock, firing more than 1,000 bullets into the crowd in 11 minutes. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 800 were injured in the 2017 shootings.

The high court, by a vote of 6 to 3, said the Justice Department was wrong to conclude that semi-automatic rifles were being converted into illegal machine guns. The devices use a gun's recoil energy to rapidly strike the trigger against the shooter's finger, mimicking automatic fire.

After the mass shooting in Buffalo, lawmakers in Hochul and New York approved a series of new gun laws, including measures to ban the sale of semi-automatic rifles to people under 21 years and to restrict the sale of bulletproof vests.

In his statement regarding the Supreme Court's decision, Hochul said state leaders are “doing everything in their power to end the scourge of gun violence.”

“We have expanded our Red Flag laws and banned teenagers from purchasing AR-15 rifles, and will continue to enforce the 2020 law banning bump stocks in New York. Public safety is my top priority – and I “committed to doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” she said.

Anthony Izaguirre, Associated Press