New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed Friday to suspend the state’s plan for background checks on ammunition sales.
The memorandum of understanding indicates that the law was suspended because the technology used to create the database is not available, the NY Times reported. The background checks never officially went into practice, although Cuomo noted in March that it was being worked on although details were scarce.
It was signed by Jim Malatras, the state’s director of operations and by John J. Flannigan, the Republican Senate majority leader.
This overturns a part of Cuomo’s Safe Act passed in January 2013 in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Safe Act included plans to ban assault weapons and make it harder for people with mental illnesses to obtain guns.
This is the second change to the Safe Act since its conception as in March 2013 a law to only allow seven rounds of ammunition to be sold was changed back to ten rounds since gun makers do not produce magazines that small, according to Bloomberg.
This change has been criticized by Democratic politicians in the legislature, notably Carl E. Heastie who was quoted by The New York Times as saying that the law “should be followed and implemented as intended.”
I did not participate in this ‘agreement’, (…) The law may not be ‘suspended’ by a memorandum such as this. I believe the law should be followed and implemented as intended.
This is a victory for republicans in the state who have been among the opponents of the Safe Act. Sen. James L. Seward-R called it “a clear victory for Second Amendment rights in New York.”
The memorandum indicates that the suspension can be overturned if the “aforementioned concerns have (can) be satisfactorily resolved.”
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