New York State now requires you to pay $2.50 and fill out a lengthy form and wait for a background check to buy ammunition. Just to make it as much of a taxing, pain in the ass process as possible for gun owners and hunters.

Most people whenever they can will certainly be planning to buy ammunition the next time they travel out of state to Pennsylvania or Vermont where you can buy ammo just by picking it off the shelf and going to the cash register and paying, most likely depriving state businesses and county and state tax revenues. Technically if you plan to use the ammunition in state your supposed to remit the sales tax to the state but few will.

How could it have been done better? For one, the process could have been automated and the fee waved. Most gun owners have drivers licenses or at least non-driver ids. Those could be scanned and an instant background check using a computer without paperwork implemented. There is no need for a fee, the cost of a database lookup is deminis and at any rate, reducing gun violence is a public purpose and there is no reason why a prohibited purchasers database couldn’t be maintained solely out of general funds.

The whole process would be a lot less objectionable had it been fully automated and free for ammunition purchasers. Maybe it could be pared tightly with the DEC DECALS system so that when you bought ammunition they could also sell you hunting and fishing licenses – or if your license was expired or soon to be expired, they could sell you a new license.