One of the mandates of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, passed in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was to require background checks on ammo purchases.
Well, several years after the rollout of the SAFE Act, the database that was supposed to be set up to conduct background checks for ammo purchasers is non-existent, so state lawmakers — unsurprisingly — had to postpone the mandate and did so by signing a memorandum last week.
Some are calling it a victory for gun rights, while others believe that it’s just delaying the inevitable.
“They don’t have the technology. The state police have told them that in Senate testimony. And so this memo says they’re not going to put it into practice until they have the technology worked out which doesn’t change anything. It’s what they were gonna do all along,” Steven Aldstadt of the Shooters Committee on Political Education or SCOPE told WGRZ.
In other words, the memo changed nothing and background checks for ammo purchases are still going to be required in the future.
Yet, Republican State Senator Patrick Gallivan claims that some progress has been made to undermine the draconian SAFE Act.
“The positive out of this is that we’ve got acknowledgement from the Governor’s office through the signing of the MOU that there are problems with the SAFE Act,” said Gallivan.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Gov. Cuomo, the architect of the SAFE Act, argued that the memo was just about timing, not whether the mandate would or would not be enacted.
“To be clear, the memorandum reiterates the administration’s intention to implement a functional database when it is ready and reinforces that the system cannot be launched prematurely,” said spokesman Alphonso David. “The memorandum can in no way superscede the law as passed by the legislature and further, there is nothing in the memorandum that is inconsistent with the letter, spirit or intent of the law.”
So, maybe one could argue that the delay via the memo is a chink in the armor of the SAFE Act — but it doesn’t appear to be a victory. Until the SAFE Act is unilaterally gutted and repealed, one would be hard pressed to say that any effort is a “victory.”
So ammunition registration won’t be enforced because the State doesn’t have the means to implement it. This is no surprise since the SAFE has had about 5% of the estimated amount of assault weapons registered.
Many years ago Washington State had an ammo registry. They dumped it after a few years as a waste of money, time and resources, for which nothing was gained as 99.999999% (or something on that order) of ammo was/is purchased for legal uses by legal and responsible citizens. NY, CA and such know this but don’t care as they will simply enact new taxes or raise taxes to fund the idiocy and those taxes will be paid by the legal and responsible gun owners of the states…and this will not deter criminals from obtaining the ammo they “need”. As with personalized firearms, the objective is to disarm the citizenry through any means possible, in this case through a fiscal burden, until there the Democrat’s feudal idealism is realized – a world of neutered peasants, unable to defend themselves or their culture/society, ruled by Democrat elites through their cohorts and henchmen. It really is that simple but most of the people are too involved in their day to day fiscal struggles and social quandaries to make the connections. Ah, the dots – people blather on and on when law enforcement fails to connect them, not realizing that much more important dots exist in our lives, politics and history that go unconnected by the masses and bode ill for the future. And I’m an optimist!
Hey, first time I have been number one commenter! On a more serious note, this is nothing to be overly joyous about. It is a temporary thing that will go like this: “We cannot get the database working and until we do we are going to suspend all ammunition sales in the state of New York until the database is up and running.” And then they will “forget” about the database repratedly. To my New Yorkers who love actual freedom, not “freedom” bequeathed to you by the state, it is time to get out. Easier said than done I agree, but until an exodus begins they will simply not care.