Scenes from life in Governor Cuomo’s SAFE Act paradise: an upstate homeowner has been charged with a felony after he defended himself from two home invaders with what prosecutors are calling an “illegal gun.”

“He told me that when they were coming up the stairs, that as they approached him, that he was scared to death and he thought they were going to kill him. One of the troopers said, ‘did you see anything in their hands?’ He said, ‘I didn’t look at their hands, I just saw them coming at me and I thought to myself, at that point, that it’s either them or me,’ and he just started firing,” (defense attorney Mark) Wolber said.

The homeowner, 64-year-old Ronald Stolarczyk, shot and killed Patricia Anne Talerico and her nephew, Nicholas Talerico. But Stolarczyk hasn’t been charged with a homicide. At least not yet. What has police concerned is the handgun Stolarczyk used.

…Stolarczyk is charged with felony gun possession because investigators believe he used his deceased father’s gun, which he never registered to himself, to kill the two suspected intruders.

So Stolarczyk’s father either gave or left the handgun in question to his son. Under New York’s famously restrictive gun control laws, the son wasn’t required to undergo a background check to receive the handgun from his father. But he did need to have a pistol permit to legally own the firearm and have it registered in his name.

Investigators are still, you know, investigating. And as the two home invaders apparently weren’t armed, it’s possible that the local prosecutor may still charge Stolarczyk with manslaughter or even murder in the case.