New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) announced on April 3 that she had signed three new gun-control bills into law and would be setting aside another $370 million to tackle gun violence across the Empire State. All three of the new bills present challenges to gun rights enshrined in the Second Amendment; and one piece of legislation raises personal privacy concerns and likely infringes upon Americans’ Fourth Amendment right to be secure against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Bill S.745/A.439 introduces a merchant code that will make it easier for law enforcement agencies to track firearms and ammunition purchases made via credit card. The first concern, here, is that a whole new layer of public employees will now have at least limited access to private citizens’ credit card information.
More troubling even than that is Hochul’s attempt to justify the Big Brother move against gun rights. “This gives law enforcement the opportunity to find out exactly who may be stockpiling ammunition,” she said. “And this is an indicator that something untoward could be happening, so it’s an important data point for us to have.”
There’s a lot to unpack from this curious reasoning. The first and most obvious point is that there is no federal law – nor, to this author’s knowledge, is there a law in any of the 50 states – against stockpiling ammunition. The New York state government, then, has branded people potentially dangerous or potentially criminal for doing something that is not at all illegal.
There’s also the question of how one defines “stockpiling.” What is the threshold at which the purchase of a large quantity of ammunition or frequent smaller ammo purchases becomes stockpiling? And who gets to decide? The average gun-grabbing politician or activist would likely consider 500 rounds of ammunition a stockpile, while the gun rights advocate would laugh at such an assumption. The dedicated firearms enthusiast or the competitive shooter would tell you that 500 rounds is equal to next month’s range-days ammo. The serious prepper might tell you that you don’t have a stockpile until you’ve got at least maybe 20,000 rounds – that you are not even using for training; that’s ammo kept in reserve for when the excrement hits the fan.
How would anyone determine if an individual is stockpiling ammunition? The guy who wants to build a large cache of ammo, but who is operating on a modest budget, may be buying just 40 or 60 rounds at a time – and only perhaps once every couple of months. At the same time, the person buying 500 rounds a month may just be doing a lot of range training. Without physical searches, no law enforcement officer would reasonably be able to determine whether someone is stockpiling ammo.
And, again, there is no law against it, and it could be for legitimate reasons, such as family safety and protection, should there be some catastrophic event.
Hochul’s comments are either deceptive or nonsensical. A strong possibility exists that this is an intimidation tactic. Just one more weapon in the war on gun rights. You’ve been warned: If we notice you are buying what we consider to be excessively large quantities of ammunition, we will flag you as a potential threat.
It is probably only a matter of time before one or all of these bills become the centerpieces of lawsuits filed by gun rights groups. The state of New York hasn’t fared particularly well in legal tussles with gun rights advocates. Still, the main takeaway from these new laws is that politicians like Hochul will never give up trying to find ways to deny law-abiding Americans their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms without infringement.
Liberty Vault: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
Liberty Vault: The Bill of Rights