Empire State Building Shooting

On February 23, 1997, Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a 69-year-old Palestinian teacher, began shooting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one person and injuring six others before committing suicide. The attack led to tougher federal gun laws for foreign visitors and recent immigrants.

Abu Kamal arrived in the United States on December 24, 1996, on a tourist visa. After staying with friends in New York City for two weeks, he traveled to Melbourne, Florida, where, using his motel address, he obtained a temporary resident card on January 30, 1997. Taking advantage of Florida's lax gun laws, he used the card to purchase a $500 semiautomatic handgun. He received the gun in five days, and returned to New York City a week later. Law enforcement officials have speculated that Abu Kamal must have had assistance from terrorists (or sympathizers) within the United States.

Just before 5 p.m. on Sunday, February 23, Abu Kamal entered the Empire State Building and took the elevator to the 86th-floor observation deck. Security cameras later revealed he concealed the gun under a long coat, and witnesses claimed to have heard Abu Kamal mention something about Egypt before he opened fire on the crowd. After shooting seven people, he shot himself in the head.

Initially, Abu Kamal's family described him as having become “unbalanced” after losing more than $300,000 in a business deal. They claimed that the loss of his life savings caused his rampage. Investigators, however, found no evidence to support this claim. They did find two letters, one in English and one in Arabic, on Abu Kamal's body after the shooting. The English letter, titled “Charter of Honour,” clearly outlined his four targets: (1) Americans, Britons, French, and all Zionists; (2) a group of his students who attacked him in 1993; (3) an Egyptian police officer and his brother in Cairo; and (4) several Ukrainian students in Gaza who had beaten his son. The letter also proved that the attack was premeditated. Abu Kamal wrote, “My restless aspiration is to murder as many of them as possible, and I have decided to strike at their own den in New York, and at the very Empire State Building in particular.” Authorities did not find any connections between Abu Kamal and any pro-Palestinian terrorist groups.

In response to the shooting, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani railed against Florida's lax gun laws, citing New York's stringent requirements. Within days, Senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Richard Durbin of Illinois introduced legislation that would ban foreign visitors from purchasing and carrying guns. Existing federal law required legal foreign immigrants to prove a 90-day residency to purchase a weapon (how Abu Kamal circumvented this law remains unclear). On March 5, 1997, President Bill Clinton asked the Treasury Department to both restrict gun access by foreign visitors and to strictly enforce the existing residency requirements of federal firearms laws.