Hot on the heels of blaming Pennsylvania for New Jersey’s violence problems, Bryan Miller has decided to turn his attention back to more comfortable pursuits of sticking it to gun owners in his home state.
He continues to peddle the myth that some semi-automatic firearms are more dangerous than other semi-automatic firearms, and pushing to increase penalties for possession in The Garden State:
The enactment of NJ’s Assault Weapons Ban was the subject of enormous public attention, as the gun lobby fought it tooth and nail and subsequently sought to repeal it (remember Governor Florio blowing a watermelon apart?). Claiming ignorance of the illegality of possession of an assault weapon is disingenuous and dangerous.
In fact, any “otherwise law-abiding” assault weapon owner would either have had to obtained his/her gun prior to 1991, purposely avoided the grace period and kept it illegally for 16 years or purchased it out-of-state since 1991 and illegally brought it here. Yet, Bach and his organization believe such illegal, cavalier and menacing behavior merits the equivalent of a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.
Ridiculous.
Remember what an assault weapons in New Jersey can look like. If you had one of these in your closet for the past 30 years, would you think you were in possession of an illegal weapon that could get you 10 years in the pokey? You’d almost think Bryan thought it audacious that residents of The Garden State were under this mistaken notion they lived in a free country with a right to bear arms provision in its constitution. This isn’t gun nut fantasy. People in New Jersey can and [UPDATE 7/22/2010: What follows was a link that has been removed, due to the anti-blogger frivolous lawsuits prosecuted by Las Vegas Review-Yellow-Journal] have been arrested and jailed for possessing of of these:
[Below is an brief quote that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Yellow-Journal about the NJ Supreme Court statement that, ‘When it comes to firearms, the citizen acts at his own peril.’ when a New Jersey citizen went to jail for possessing a Marlin Model 60, a common .22 caliber rifle. I have removed the passage because I do not link to or promote rat weasels like the Las Vegas Review-Journal.]
I have to assume that’s just fine by Mr. Miller. One more gun owner in jail where they belong, right? If that’s not really what his sentiment, then he wouldn’t have any problem passing a rimfire exception to the New Jersey ban now would he? Don’t think so? I don’t either.