BILL NUMBER:S2613

TITLE OF BILL:

An act to repeal section 400.03 of the penal law relating to sellers
of ammunition

PURPOSE:

To terminate a state program requiring the registration of ammunition
retailers and background checks for the purchase of ammunition

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section repeals section 400.03 of the penal law. Section 2 redirects
funding ascribable to the program to public schools to hire school
resource and safety officers (SROs). Section 3 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 bill further redirects funding to public school districts to
assist in the hiring of school resource officers.

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:


Approximately $30 million per year is allocated to the state
operations budget for the office of information technology. It is
difficult to ascribe a specific portion of that total 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, which would be transferred to the aid to localities budget for
funding school resource officers (SRO) in the state's public schools.

EFFECTIVE DATE:

Immediate