In an article where low-wattage NBC New York reporters marvel over the fact that the NY SAFE Act is an utter failure because it bans only superfluous cosmetic features, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence executive director Leah Gunn Barrett comes off sounding slow-witted.

NYU law professor James Jacobs, who has written extensively on gun control issues, praises portions of the SAFE Act, including expanded background checks.

But he says the the assault rifle ban has resulted in a remodeled gun that is no less dangerous – just less scary looking.

“It differs only in how it looks, not in how it functions,” Jacobs said.

The law redefined an assault weapon as a semi-automatic rifle that can accept a detachable magazine and has one military-style feature such as a pistol grip or folding stock.

Tretola told the I-Team those features are less about killing, and more about comfort.

“The pistol grip? That’s just so you can hold it better,” he said. “The collapsible stock is actually so if a shorter person than I am is shooting, they could bring it in and make it shorter.”

Yet gun control advocates say a less comfortable rifle is also a less deadly weapon.

“The legal gun looks a lot like the illegal gun,” said Leah Gunn Barrett, the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. “Does that make this law essentially cosmetic? No. These features all have specific functions.”

For example, Gunn Barrett said a forward-leaning pistol grip might give a mass shooter better control over his rifle.

“The gun is still lethal,” Gunn Barrett said. “Yes, it can still kill people. But it is not as easy to manipulate and fire accurately than it would be if you had a forward-leaning pistol grip.”

I would like for Ms. Barrett to show me  a “forward-leaning pistol grip.” I’d like for her to show me a rearward-leaning pistol grip. I’d like her to show me a pistol grip that doesn’t lean at all, but just sort of sits there.

I’d like her to explain the physics and and the physiology and the ergonomics of such devices, and how they make a firearm “easy to manipulate and fire [more] accurately” compared the ban-compliant stocks, and traditional stocks which she apparently thinks were designed to make firearms swing wildly, and fling lead like some sort of lethal dowsing rod.

I’d like Leah Gunn Barrett to point at an AR-15 and simply identify a flash hider, a bayonet lug, a pistol grip, and a collapsible stock, and then rationally explain what purpose they serve.

I suspect that she’d have a better chance teaching a Labradoodle how to knit.

Barrett sounds just as clueless as former congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, who famously couldn’t tell Tucker Carlson what a barrel shroud was, even as she tried to ban it.