Matt Carmel’s quest to get the name of his business, “Constitution Arms,” on a team uniform has come up short again, with a rugby league that initially accepted his sponsorship doing an about-face under pressure from other sponsors.
He says this will mark the end of his quest. This is how bad the culture has gotten in New Jersey.
I thank God I was born in ND and I don’t ever plan on leaving. Life is just too good here.
Vote with you feet!
Dann in Ohio
Well, if he is a gun store, what does he want to sponsor a baseball team for? Why not sponsor a shooting team at the local boy scout troop or something? It could be air rifle, to hold costs down, or 22 if he wanted to spend a bit more.
Air rifle is tempting, because there is less hassle about setting up a range – sheet metal over wood will stop hundreds of pellets. Maybe you could set up an airsoft club, since it is in new jersey, or paintball.
Some (rare) high schools have shooting teams. Maybe the NRA could give him contact info for local coaches, instructors, etc. If his shop is big enough, he could provide meeting space.
He might even develop some future customers.
to transport an airsoft gun in New Jersey you need a firearms permit. A *firearms* permit. You need to fill out the same paperwork at the police department, get fingerprinted and everything you’d have to to buy a Red Ryder BB gun as a real gun.
He wanted to sponsor the team for the same reason all of those other legitimate businesses wanted to, and he probably had more of a reason to since his son had played in the same league.
The league obviously took his sign up money for his son, even though his father made the money selling evil guns.
It’s hypocrisy, in one of the original 13 colonies a man who manufactures objects linked to the second amendment, who in fact named his company after our constitution is being shunned from his local society because of people who can’t separate the hollywood myth of guns from the reality.
Hell, the safest sports statistically are shooting sports, more school kids are die every year from baseball or football or soccer than do skeet shooting or biathlon or bullseye pistol.
The hypocrisy is suffocating.
Orrin, the other sponsors mentioned in the article are some sort of Hooters knockoff named Cluck U and a company called “Tech Enterprises”.
I suppose that they should only donate cash to 4H and the Math Club respectively…
Paul is correct.
I got arrested when I was 18 for having an illegal firearm – a crossman pump bb gun that I was squirrel hunting with – by the Rockaway Twp police. Luckily, they called the cops in Boonton Twp who came and picked me up and dropped me off at home. But not after lecturing me on the dangers of guns.
It wa a leanig experience, one I used to move on out as soon as I graduated high school.
At the current time, Airsoft is *not* treated as a firearm. BB guns *are* in NJ (relevant statute law is “airguns, spring guns … capable of causing injury”). There are bills in the legislature to “clarify” both of these cases – to pull BB guns out of firearms, and to put airsoft *in* firearms. The BB gun law would not necessarily move Airsoft definitely out of firearms as it classifies BB guns as firing .177 caliber blunt or round pellets with an FPS limit of 500 or so, commonly known as BB guns…
Airsoft guns are not that hard to get ahold of in NJ – and I bought a low-end gas-powered one at a store that had just spun off their FFL into a separate business (next door – went over and windowshopped them while I was there) without having to burn a pistol permit.
IANAL and one never knows what wild hair the NJ Supremes will get if a case came to them; but as of right now no-one seriously believes an airsoft gun is a firearm in NJ law, and everyone believes a BB gun is (though the statue is unhelpfully vague). One of the side effects of the current suit to overturn NJ’s recently-enacted one-(legal)-handgun-a-month law may be to clarify this, based on ANJRPC’s clever legal hack.
I regularly see NJ plates in the parking lot at Camp Perry, and I presume they’re not there as spectators. There are [perfectly legal] rifle teams in New Jersey, stop your raving above, and there are perfectly legal means for juniors to shoot. And that is where the sponsorship of gun dealers is desperately needed.
Maybe some New Jersey shooters should contact this gentleman with a constructive suggestion and a business case. Or maybe you’re not up to it.
There are a lot of shooters in New Jersey. My club is about 1/3rd people from the Garden State. But the surrounding culture in New Jersey is very hostile to gun ownership, and what Matt has inadvertently done by trying to sponsor a team at his kid’s little league is exposed it for all to see. Sometimes people have to be shown how bad things have gotten before they’ll get off their asses and do something about it.
Hmm – unusually high number of anti-gun commentors for nj.com on that article…