Cuomo Agrees to Suspend Planned Background Checks for Ammunition Sales

An important element of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s gun control initiative - requiring background checks for the purchase of ammunition - has been suspended under a deal the governor reached with state Senate Republicans Friday.

The New York Times reports that the decision was reached through pressure from the Senate’s Republican Majority, which has sought changes to the Safe Act, which carried the requirement. The Safe Act is a suite of gun control laws passed following the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Cuomo had made background checks for ammunition sales one of the central pieces of the Safe Act, in part because he wanted a multi-pronged approach to tackle gun control.

However, though passed by the legislature in 2013, background checks for ammunition sales had yet to be enacted, because a key component of that initiative remains incomplete. A computer database was to be created to track ammunition sales, but exactly how and when it might be finished has not been disclosed.

The lack of such a system gave Republicans in favor of gun rights the opening they needed to press Cuomo to suspend the effort.

Click here to read the agreement, by way of Capital New York. Called a Memorandum of Understanding, the document states that the database “cannot be established and/or function in the manner originally intended at this time.”

“While I will continue to work for full repeal of the poorly crafted, over-reaching NY-SAFE Act, this is a significant accomplishment—and constitutes the only modifications that have been made to this law since it was enacted two years ago over my objection,” said Republican Sen. Jim Seward in a statement.

Democrats in Albany responded angrily to the deal. “I did not participate in this ‘agreement,’” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told the Times. “The law may not be ‘suspended’ by a memorandum such as this. I believe the law such be followed and implemented as intended.”

The move to suspend the ammunition background check requirement, is just the most recent example of Cuomo quietly - yet abruptly - changing course on a signature initiative. In 2014, Cuomo shut down the Moreland Commission he created to weed out corruption in Albany, before it had a chance to dig into the issue.

The move was criticized by the Times and others, and led to a United States Attorney’s office investigation of the Cuomo administration’s handling of the whole matter.

Click here to read the full story on The New York Times website.

Patch file photo.