On Friday, in a deal with the State Senate’s Republican majority, Governor Andrew Cuomo (alignment: chaotic evil) agreed to suspend a plan requiring background checks on ammunition sales. This would seem to undermine at least in part the signature gun control measures he passed in his first term as governor.

According to the New York Times, the background check system—which was part of Cuomo’s Safe Act, passed during his first term, in January 2013, after the mass school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut—had not yet been put into place. In March, Cuomo said a database designed to facilitate the background check system was still being developed.

From the Times:

On Friday, a top aide to Mr. Cuomo signed a memorandum of understanding suspending the portion of the Safe Act related to the background checks. The memorandum, citing “the lack of adequate technology,” said the database “cannot be established and/or function in the manner originally intended at this time.”

The document was signed by the governor’s director of state operations, Jim Malatras, and the Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan of Long Island. “This is a clear victory for Second Amendment rights in New York,” said Senator James L. Seward, a Republican from Otsego County, who was one of a number of Republican senators who publicized the agreement.

Cuomo’s fellow Democrats have been quick to distance themselves from the agreement, the Times reports. “Just controlling guns isn’t enough,” Cuomo had said in 2013.

Alphonso B. David, the governor’s counsel, told the Times that the deal did not compromise the integrity of the Safe Act. The memo “has no power or effect on the law,” he said, but “provides assurances to all that the database will not be implemented until it is ready and tested.” Consider yourselves assured.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.