New York (State and City) has an obsession with blaming weapons (and potential weapons) for crime, they have a web of arcane and nonsensical laws which tend to penalize common people who want to believe that the laws are reasonable, and are surprised to find out just how unreasonable they are. The officials of course love these laws. They've made the public so wary of "weapons" that it's valuable for them to invent as many "weapons offenses" as possible.

I wonder if New York's approach to weapons laws has roots in their switch from slave state to free state (which was late for the region) like so many laws in other states. Texas took until the '90s to manage to annul their prohibitions on the concealed carry of handguns (they were no-issue up until 1995) which were clearly initially intended to be enforced selectively against the emancipated.