Gun loophole disarms DAs

A legal loophole is forcing New York prosecutors to drop charges against a slew of criminals caught with high-capacity gun magazines like those used in Saturday’s supermarket slaughter in Buffalo.

Albany pols, including a Buffalo lawmaker, introduced a bill to close the loophole several days ago.

State law bans magazines with capacities of more than 10 bullets if they were manufactured before 1994. But proving its manufacture date is extremely hard, considering the lack of serial numbers and other tell-tale signs, prosecutors tell The Post.

“It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult to do,” said Chris Horn, an Albany County assistant district attorney.

“If there’s no real information about the device, even though we all know it can handle ‘x’ number of bullets, we’re not going to be able to prove [when] it’s manufactured,” he said.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said the law also has severely curbed its ability to bring charges against suspects, with a source noting that “numerous” raps involving illegal magazines have had to be dropped.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) has proposed legislation to close the loophole at the behest of Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

Gun magazines are devices that feed ammunition into a weapon. Many legal magazines are removable and easily replaced with illegal ones with higher capacities, as was the case in the Buffalo attack.

The 30-round magazines allegedly used by suspect Payton Gendron allow a shooter to fire much more quickly than legal 10-round magazines.

Exactly where Gendron got high-capacity magazines remains unclear, although they can be legally purchased in Pennsylvania just miles from his hometown, as well as on the Internet.