Corzine’s prospects are looking increasingly dim. Smart politics for the Dems would be the old switcheroo, but I don’t think Corzine’s ego will let it happen. We’ll see. In a battle between the Democratic Party machine in New Jersey and Corzine’s ego, I’m not honestly sure which one wins.
19 thoughts on “Switcheroo Coming?”
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Corzine’s ego, barring blackmail. Which I won’t rule out.
Who cares who wins? There’s nothing better for a Blue Dog Dem or a Republican candidate than in-fighting between the party elite and their former favorite. It’s entirely possible they’ll be too distracted to see another threat coming their way.
Gotta love Boss Politics; btw, where is the Tammany Hall of NJ? :D
chamberedround:
I’d have to say that the Tammany Hall of NJ is Hudson County. Blue Water runs deep here.
I’m proud to hail from the Garden State. Their progressive position on capital punishment as well as their gun laws should be examples for the rest of the country.
I live in Rome Italy now. Last night I had a reunion with a friend from 20 years ago. We had dinner and did the usual catching up in broad strokes, like you do with someone you were close with that long ago.
I asked him at a certain point if he owns guns or knows people who do. Now as I did that I was thinking it’s a good little survey because he’s 53 years old, grew up in Elizabeth like I did, had various experiences in his life and ended up a typical working guy.
He looked shocked at the question and said “no, uh, why would you ask that?” as if I’d asked him about aliens or flying saucers. I thought, this is a normal guy with a normal reaction.
Well mikeb302000, Im disgusted to be a prisoner of the Peoples Socialist Republic of New Jersey , to the point that Im escaping to freedom in Pennsylvania this winter and taking my family with me . News flash Mike , not everyone in NJ embraces or even wants your ideal of some progressive utopian nirvana . NJ is an example all right , an example of everything thats wrong with the progressive , entitlement agenda . Highest Property and Business Taxes in the Nation , Highest Unemployment in 30 years , record numbers of people fleeing for other States , three of the top five most violent Cities in the Nation , US Attorney’s Office now acknowledging NJ is the most corrupt State in the Country . And absolutley the WORST firearms laws .
Didn’t NJ end up in a 3-way tie with Mass and CA the last time that question came up?
Nonentheless, they certainly do suck. And the astonishment about guns is unique to the northeast and CA, pretty much. I moved here from a free state, and grew up around firearms (though never did much shooting myself). With Armed Canadian’s help I introduced my wife to shooting and she took to it like a duck to water; hasn’t looked back
I live in Pennsylvania, but I once paid a visit to a gun shop in Jersey on the way back from a business trip in Connecticut. My visit was solely out of curiosity, and it was interesting to say the least. This gun shop had relatively few handguns, and the long guns were all mostly shotguns with a few .22 rifles mixed in.
I asked an employee whether this gun shop had any 7.62 x 39 ammunition in stock. He said the shop’s owner usually doesn’t keep it in stock. I said that was probably because of the “assault weapon” ban in New Jersey. He agreed.
I then asked him if the shop ever had SKS rifles in stock, but this employee did not seem all that familiar with this particular firearm as he was telling me no. I then just thanked him and left the shop – I did not want to appear rude by laughing in his face.
New Jersey has a long way to go as far as having a so-called “gun culture” compared to most other states, it seems.
Yes it does.
How many offices can Lautenberg hold?
As long as he’s a senator, just the one
“Their progressive position on capital punishment as well as their gun laws should be examples for the rest of the country.”
Really.
My fiancee _may_ now be close to getting the pistol permit that she applied for three months ago. That includes the legal 30-day limit, plus two months in which she couldn’t get the permitting officer to pick up his phone to address the “deficiency” he found in her application–a requirement invented arbitrarily by the officer which hadn’t been required for her or my former pistol permits nor our Firearms IDs, and which was related to the one of the fields on the application _not_ actually called for by state law but insisted on by the cops anyway. Specifically, she listed her employer as one of the two legally-required character references; the police also, exceeding the scope of NJ law, demand that you disclose your employer, whom they contact with the same questionairre about your psychological fitness that goes to your character references. This officer decided that (this time) my fiancee needed a third character reference so that there’d be no overlap. Ultimately, she resubmitted the application.
This new permit is required in advence for her to purchase a .22 target pistol, which is significantly less concealable and less powerful than firearms she already owns. The permit is obviously necessary for public safety, because it’s issued only after a federal background check; it authorizes her to go to the gun shop and purchase a single handgun, after producing the pistol permit, her NJ Firearms ID Card (another fee and federal background check), and going through… a federal background check.
And we have it easy; in much of Jersey, the waits for permits are six months to a year.
Yep. A capricious, arbitrary, pointlessly burdensome system that more than doubles the law-enforcement workload by requiring them to do exactly the same job at least twice per purchase, makes it difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise a Constitutionally protected right, puts the exercise of that right at the mercy of one’s employer, and fundamentally affects only those people who can pass the federally required background check that all states have.
Common-sense gun laws that should be the model for the nation, obviously.
Actually – as far as I can tell the permitting system in NJ doesn’t use NICS; it’s done entirely by the State Bureau of Investigation. (Who probably go bug the FBI, but that’s neither here nor there). There was a bill up in the Assembly this lasdt session that would have changed the process to use NICS; which would have saved the state a considerable amount of money (NICS checks are pretty cheap, compared to the time of a State Trooper).
I’m given to understand that one of the reasons for the backlog on applications right now is that the troopers are all out from behind desks because of the budget shortfalls – whether it’s to increase the number of tickets written or to cut back on overtime I have not heard.
OTOH, I apparently have it lucky – the delay for my permits was entirely due to the staties not being able to read my prints; assuming I re-apply within the 18 months that my town assumes the state check is good for they won’t go back to the SBI, and despite having to be refingerprinted it “only” took 3 months.
That having been said, the next few purchases I want to make will not require new permits. I want a .22 kit for my glock and a K-T SUB2000 in glock 9mm; the first I can mail order for extra PSH goodness, and the second counts as a rifle, so my FOID is good for it. Tempted to apply for a permit anyway when I go to change my address just in case I run across something, and to give the finger to the nj.gov.
Our local gun dealer (who’s also an officer with the local PD) told us that the local permitting officer forwards the background check to the state troopers, who then (eventually) forward it to the feds. Then the feds send the info back to the troopers who (eventually) send it back to the local permitting officer. This is, again, straight from an officer who’s intimately involved with civilian firearms ownership, but obviously police officers can make mistakes too. Take it for what it’s worth.
In any case, a pointless make-work system that benefits nobody but the people who want to stamp out legal behavior they don’t like, and burdens only law-abiding citizens who’re qualified to own guns without burdening criminals in the slightest. In short, a modern gun-control law.
Best of luck with the kit and SUB2000. I’ve been very, very tempted by the .22 conversions for my 1911, and the Kel-Tecs seem like wonderful doodads for backwards states like NJ and NY where transporting a pistol is made excessively difficult, but transporting a long arm is still _relatively_ easy.
The next items on my list are also long arms (a pump shotgun and .22 rifle), but there are handguns I’d be very interested in if not for NJ’s asinine permitting system. As it is, if I apply for more permits my employer’s panicky HR department may decide that “employee buying guns” equals “potential workplace violenceOMGHELP!” THat my state thinks it’s appropriate to involve my employer in the exercise of my constitutional rights is honestly the part of this whole offensive system that I find most offensive.
Enh – the transport regs for a longarm aren’t any different from those of a handgun. OTOH, I just queried a FFL and he says the distributors have no SUB2000 right now. And when I last looked, the .22 kit for my glock is backordered at the manufacturer. I *do* know an FFL with one in stock, but they’re charging significantly over the internet price for it. The internet price is somewhat less than a Ruger Mk.I I saw in my local FFL, but that Mk.I is cheaper than the AA kit the other one has. And at any rate, I don’t really have the money right now for either, so it’s entirely academic.
I’ve gotten to play with a Mk.I before, and I do like it – especially since the one on sale has been significantly customized.
“…the transport regs for a longarm aren’t any different from those of a handgun.”
The NRA infosheet for New Jersey disagrees:
“It is unlawful to knowingly possess any handgun, including any antique handgun, without first having obtained a Permit to Carry, and it is unlawful to knowingly possess any rifle or shotgun without having first obtained a Firearms Purchaser Identification Card (FID)”
_Then_ all the stupid “exemptions” (you must be going directly from your home to a shooting range without any stops and have a note from your mother) kick in. But it seems you can transport a long arm more or less at will as long as you have an FID. (I’m not a lawyer, grain of salt, etc.)
And all’s I’ll say is that I’ve never known anybody who was unhappy with a Ruger MkX. ;)
Youmissed the rest of the page, which basically says you don’t need a permit to carry on your property, etc…
Basically, while the law first states you have to have the permit to carry to posess a handgun (printed on unicorn skin) or an FID to posess a longarm; it then goes and says posession of FIREARMS is permissible under the following circumstances (and then lists the rigamarole for transporting a firearm).
Otherwise I couldn’t possess a pistol, not having a Permit to Carry. Since I always posess it under the conditions listed for posessing a firearm, I’m good.
The only effective difference in NJ law between a handgun and a longarm (excepting the banned Assault Weapons) is that you have to get a permit to purchase for each handgun, whereas the FID lets you buy any number of longarms. That first paragraph would nominally allow carry of a longarm as long as you have a FID, but requires a Permit to Carry for a handgun (barring falling into one of the listed exemptions).
Technically you don’t need an FID to own a handgun or longarm as long as you NEVER leave one of the carve-outs. Not that I, as a non-lawyer, would advocate this. And there’s an interesting section (that I didn’t see referenced on that sheet) that requires the posessor to be presumptively in violation UNLESS he has his FID on his person; presumably to cover the carry of a longarm outside of the exceptions listed.
IE – it would have been perfectly legal for me to posesss a Ruger Mk.I that I had obtained as a resident of VA, without a FID or Permit to Carry, as long as it never left one of the exceptions. It would have been idiotic, certainly; and I would almost certainly had some difficulty buying ammo or shooting it at a range. But it would have been technically legal.
Youmissed the rest of the page, which basically says you don’t need a permit to carry on your property, etc…
I don’t think I did. :)
In order, the law is (according to NRA-ILA): You may posess a firearm only if you have a Permit to Carry (handguns) or an FID (long arms). Except that no permits are required to [half page of specific exceptions, including posession in the home, posession at a firing range, and posession in the trunk of your car in between the two].
The wording of that is pretty clear to me: if you have an FID, you can posess a long arm freely. If you have a Permit to Carry, you can posess a handgun freely. Without either of the necessary permits, you can only posess the relevant type of firearm under very specific conditions. The wording is clear… Of course, it’s a New Jersey law, so it may have since been found by Jersey courts to mean the opposite of what it says, but still the wording itself is clear. ;)
IE – it would have been perfectly legal for me to posesss a Ruger Mk.I that I had obtained as a resident of VA, without a FID or Permit to Carry, as long as it never left one of the exceptions.
Also relevant to native New Jerseyans in that, though NJ considers black powder handguns and hand-airguns to be firearms (for the love of…), federal law, of course, doesn’t. Because no permit is required to _own_ a handgun in Jersey, it’s perfectly legal to cross over into a sane state, buy a BB plinker or cowboy gun, and cross back into Jersey without applying for a single permit. And it’s perfectly legal to buy ammo outside the state and to transport your permissionless gun to and from a range.
I don’t know if I’d _recommend_ it, as NJ cops and judges have a reputation for enforcing the laws they _want_ rather than the ones on the books, but there you are.
Fair enough. I had more or less overlooked that with a FID I didn’t have to secure the longarm in transit, etc. Mainly because of the “it wouldn’t be a good idea to get caught at it” unwritten clause. And because I would generally secure the weapon anyway in transit.
Anyway, I think we’ve hijacked the comment thread enough.
Fair enough. I had more or less overlooked that with a FID I didn’t have to secure the longarm in transit…
Much more important, in my mind, is that you can ignore the “straight from point A to point B with no stops” clause that applies to handguns without a PtC. Stop at the McDonalds on the way home from the range with a handgun in your trunk, and you’ve committed a felony. Lock the rifle in your trunk, and you can go to work, run some errands, visit a friend, and _then_ stop off at the range at the end of the day, a big plus when your range isn’t close to your home.
And you can bring a long arm for defense away from the home, like in a hotel (in accordance with their own rules, obviously), which isn’t allowed with handguns under NJ rules. That’s why the Kel-Tec SUs seem like such a good idea: you can legally move a long arm with you in a backpack without advertising it to potential thieves or “the law is what I say it is” cops.
And I think you’re right. That’s about far enough from NJ electoral politics for this thread.