Repeals provisions of law relating to sellers of ammunition

Summary of provisions

Section 1 repeals section 400.03 of the penal law. Section 2 provides the effective date.

Existing law

Section 400.03 of the penal law was adopted in 2013 as part of the governor's SAFE Act. It requires that a retail seller of ammunition be registered with the State of New York and it imposes burdensome and unnecessary record-keeping requirements on retailers for the sale of any amount of any ammunition in any gauge or caliber for any purpose by any person, whether the purchaser owns a firearm or not. It also prohibits law abiding citizens from engaging in routine commerce via the purchase of ammunition over the Internet.

It requires the retailer to collect intrusive information on buyers, such as a buyer's occupation, and make such information available to "any" peace or police officer, with no stated cause. It requires retailers and the state to acquire and accumulate a great deal of personal data about any ammunition purchaser, without regard to firearm ownership.

Current law further requires a background check on any buyer via the creation of a state-only database, the cost of which is undetermined. The background process requires the retailer to submit to state authorities information such as the amount of ammunition being purchased by the buyer and its specific caliber. Under the law, a massive database will have to be created and maintained in order for authorities to ascertain who, in their judgment, is qualified to purchase ammunition.

Justification

Every American citizen, whether a gun owner or not; every civil libertarian and everyone who is concerned about the government's accumulation, review and dissemination of personal data should be concerned about the enormous breadth and depth of data accumulation that this section of law authorizes and requires. This section of the SAFE Act gives the state government the power to develop a massive state database capable of checking the background of anyone in the United States or the world who might purchase ammunition, whether a nonresident hunter from an adjacent state or a biathlon competitor from Europe. The law requires a database so comprehensive that it must be able to verify the suitability of anyone stopping in at a gun dealer or a large retailer anywhere in New York to buy ammunition. New York State law enforcement authorities have no demonstrated need to know the occupation of a buyer of ammunition or the amount and caliber/gauge of ammunition that one purchases.

Apart from its intrusiveness, the law makes no provision for those who have undergone other background checks in the course of purchasing firearms or acquiring pistol licenses. It's entirely probable that an individual cleared by the federal government's NICS program for the

purchase of a firearm would have to undergo a second and immediate background check for the purchase of a box of ammunition for the firearm he or she just purchased.

In addition, the law imposes new and unreimbursed costs on retailers, and places New York retailers of ammunition at a competitive disadvantage compared to neighboring states. As a corollary, buyers need only to purchase their ammunition out of state.

Further, the intrusive and personal data required to be collected under this provision applies to anyone, firearm owner or not, who seeks to buy ammunition. It is not uncommon for someone to purchase ammunition as a gift or favor for a hunter or avid shooter. To collect this amount of data on anyone, whether or not the buyer is a gun owner, raises Constitutional issues of privacy. The law requires the data at a gun dealer's store to be available to "any" peace or police officer, without specifying the cause necessitating the inspection.

This expensive and unwieldy program, like the failed COBIS program of Gov. Pataki's sweeping gun control package considered by the legislature in 2000, will be ineffective, costly and intrusive.

Last, no data exist to support the contention that a background check on ammunition buyers deters or inhibits crime, since non-gun owners can purchase ammunition. Thousands of New Yorkers have been, and are, buying ammunition from retailers without data collection in a background check and there's not a scrap of evidence that an ammunition purchase directly facilitated any crime. Law abiding gun owners will submit to background checks; criminals do not. No criminal will be deterred by this provision from acquiring ammunition.

The provision unnecessarily burdens one's Constitutional right and free exercise of the Second Amendment to use firearms for lawful purposes, creates additional obstacles for law abiding gun owners, hunters, target shooters and sportsmen, and constitutes an unjustified intrusion into one's privacy and the conduct of what has heretofore historically been considered ordinary and routine commerce.

Legislative history

New bill

Fiscal implications

It is difficult to ascribe a specific portion of the state police and OIT's budgets to the implementation of section 400.03, but a conservative estimate would place the savings at several million in each budget in each subsequent year.

Effective date

Immediate