Category: New Jersey

Despite 500 people showing up during a snowstorm on Wednesday to protest, the committee went ahead with a vote anyway, and passed 20 or so horrible bills out of committee. ANJRPC notes:

Bills set to move to full Assembly Vote On Thursday, February 21. Please start contacting both of your Assembly Members and urge them not to support any new anti-gun measures. Thank you to the 500 Second Amendment supporters who attended today’s hearings and held legislators’ feet to the fire!

Those bills are listed here. Let me translate this for you. In order, they would:

1. AB588 – Ban most rifle ammunition.
2. A1116 – Must report lost and stolen firearms to police. Fines and a 180 day firearm purchase prohibition for violators.
3. A1329 – Reduce magazine capacity from 15 to 10 rounds. No grandfathering.
4. A1387 – Weapon free “safety zones” within 1000 feet around public property like schools, parks, public housing, or other public buildings. Specifically applies to unknowingly being within 1000 feet.
5. A1613 – Bullshit task force.
6. A3510 – Requires training to purchase a firearm and for FID cards.
7. A3583 – Another bullshit task force.
8. A3645 – Requires face-to-face transactions for ammo.
9. A3646 – Licensing for ammunition vendors.
10. A3659 – Weapons 50 caliber or larger are destructive devices.
11. A3666 – Mail order of ammunition prohibited.
12. A3668 – Prohibits state investments in companies that make so-called “assault weapons.”
13. A3687 – No guns for people who are on a secret government list.
14. A3717 – Submit mental health records to NICS.
15. A3748 – End private sales. There were private sales in NJ?
16. A3750 – All ammunition sales registered and reported to the State Police.
17. A3754 – Allows mental health professionals to order firearms be seized form patients. This will ensure no one who owns guns seeks mental health treatment, even if they may need it.
18. A3772 – Require picture ID on FID cards.
19. A3788 – Abolish access to firearm records. This one actually looks good.
20. A3796 – Allows 90 days to dispose of unlawful firearms.
21. A3797 – Requires reporting of ballistics data for seized guns to federal system.
22. ACR180 – Bullshit resolution urging feds to shit on your rights.
23. AR143 – Bullshit resolution supporting gun buybacks.
24. AR144 – Bullshit resolution on mental health.

After the pre-planned rally in Trenton managed to turn out about 1,000 people even with an impending blizzard hitting New Jersey, lawmakers decided to suddenly scheduled hearings on 24 gun control bills the following week (today) so that gun owners would be less likely to attend given the time they took off of work the week before.

One report I saw pop up on Facebook appears to show that they aren’t keeping gun owners from speaking out against more gun control:

So many Pro-2A people showed up to testify against new gun control in NJ, that they can not all fit in the building. An emergency demonstration permit has been issued to allow them to gather outside the Capitol.

From the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs:

Q. ANJRPC has seemed quiet lately. What’s going on?

A. We are deeply engaged preparing for the most critical legislative battles gun owners have ever faced. Most of our work is behind the scenes right now and cannot be publicly discussed. We will have a lot to say when the time is right, as always.

Q. What kind of threats are we facing in NJ?

A. NJ legislators recently introduced 23 bills containing some of the most extreme measures ever proposed. Like requiring a psychological exam and in-home inspection before you can buy a firearm; 5-round ammunition capacity limit (a gun ban in disguise); draconian ammunition regulations, and a lot more. We will be providing detailed analysis of some of the worst of the bunch. And there may be more coming.

Q. We saw what just happened with the passage of New York’s extreme new gun laws. Can that happen here?

A. Anything can happen in the Garden State, but there is a very different legislative and political dynamic in New Jersey right now than there is in New York.We are working to keep it that way.

Q. Can my identity as a gun owner be obtained through freedom of information laws and published like what
just happened in New York?

A. No. New Jersey law is different from New York law and protects the identities of gun owners from disclosure.

Q. What’s your take on the national situation?

A. We’re in the fight of our lives.Anti-gun extremists have seized on the Newtown tragedy as their watershed moment, and are going for broke. Their aim is to destroy the Second Amendment, and they are blaming you for what happened in Connecticut. The media are overwhelmingly biased in their favor, and are falsely portraying gun owners as divided. It is more important than ever that gun owners be unified and support national organizations like NRA. We all need to speak with one voice on a national level and defend freedom.

Q. What can I do in New Jersey?

A. Prepare for battle. That means understanding that in the end this is going to come down to a series of committee hearings and legislative floor votes.Those are key moments when we need to make ourselves heard with maximum impact. That means if you have limited time and energy, you might want to conserve your time and energy for those moments. We will alert you as we always do as the threats start to move, and we will make specific action requests, like asking you to contact legislators, attend hearings, etc. With 23 bills just dumped on us, there could be a lot of activity and a lot of requests, and each must be treated with the same importance and fervor as the rest

Q. But I want to do more. Is there more I can do?   

A. Absolutely.You can proactively contact your legislators right now, you can write letters to the editor, you can donate to pro-Second Amendment organizations. Tell your legislators that these bills will do nothing to prevent another tragedy, will interfere with self defense, and wrongly punish law abiding citizens for the acts of criminals and madmen. But remember, the key moment of action will be committee hearings and floor votes. Your work is not done until you’ve weighed in then.

Q. What about the February 8 rally in Trenton?

A. If rallies are your thing, by all means, go. ANJRPC officers have been invited to speak and may well do so. The organizers have worked very hard putting this rally together, and we applaud their efforts. While rallies rarely change how legislators vote, they can be a great show of strength if well attended, and they can be inspiring. Just remember – your work is not done until you’ve weighed in with legislators at the key moments of action in the legislative process. For those interested, more on the rally is available here.

Q. Is ANJRPC going to cave or compromise in the upcoming battles?

A. Not a chance. For over a decade, we have fought in the trenches and defeated nearly every piece of misguided legislation that has come our way, against impossible odds. Our resolve is stronger than ever, and we will use every resource at our disposal to defend against this latest legislation dump.

Q. Can legislators really force us to pass a psychological evaluation and have an in-home inspection as a condition of exercising my constitutional right to own a firearm?

A. Legislators can write anything they want. If both houses of the legislature and the governor sign it, it becomes “law” even though it might be unconstitutional. It will stay on the books and be enforced by the organs of the state until someone challenges
it. That’s why ANJRPC has been aggressively using litigation to challenge some of the worst laws in New Jersey, and we have
bigger plans in the works.

Q. What is the impact of a 5-round magazine limitation?

A. It’s a stealth gun ban, an assault on the right of self defense, and would do nothing to prevent another tragedy. It would give criminals tremendous advantage over the law-abiding, and render many of the firearms you own useless.

To you folks in New Jersey, I can practically piss out my window and hit the New Jersey State Capitol (that’s a bit of a hyperbole, unfortunately), so if you need anything, let me know. In the amount of time it takes for a coffee break I can be over there helping out.

Looks like someone has been spending money to poll New Jersey residents about gun control. The Garden State has among the lowest rates of gun ownership in the country, and people who don’t exercise their rights aren’t going to generally be that concerned with the rights of others. I think most people only support rights they view as affecting themselves positively, and care not a whit for rights values by others if they themselves don’t value them. The solution is to recruit more gun owners. You can see the press release from Rutgers here, which does have some encouraging signs:

Nearly two-thirds of New Jersey voters say controlling gun ownership is more important than gun owner rights. This represents a decline since 1999, when 73 percent preferred gun control over gun owner rights. Today, 72 percent without guns at home say gun control is more important than owner rights, 31 points higher than voters in gun owning households. “The stereotype is that those with guns want nothing to do with restricting their rights,” said Redlawsk. “Here, that also appears mostly true. While many with guns at home say gun ownership should be controlled, a majority thinks owners’ rights should trump. Overall we’ve seen a small move toward the gun owner rights position over time.”

It’s at least heading in the right direction.

Voters prefer to see the state’s gun laws tightened: 47 percent want stricter laws while 11 percent want them more lax. Twenty-eight percent prefer the status quo. While a plurality would tighten laws, the percentage is down from the 58 percent who wanted stricter laws in 1999. […]

[…]  “While New Jersey is less supportive of gun rights than many places, there has been a conservative trend over the past decade,” noted Redlawsk. “More people are concerned about violence. Most still want gun control, but the number favoring fewer restrictions has clearly grown.”

Getting some of New Jersey’s laws overturned would probably go a long way to fixing this problem. The poll clearly shows once people are gun owners, their support for restrictions tend to drop. I’d also note that many New Jersey gun owners have little idea that the hell their state puts them through to exercise their right is highly unusual, and is not how things are handled in most other states.

A blind gun collector wins his guns back, in New Jersey.

Eugene Volokh mentions the case. Aitken’s convictions for unlicensed transport, and high capacity magazines were reversed. His conviction for having hollow point ammunition was allowed to stand. There’s one crime Brian Aitken is guilty of, and that’s believing when he moved to New Jersey he was still living in America.

• On the charge of transportation without a permit, the court found that the judge’s failure to properly instruct the jury as to exceptions was sufficient to squash the conviction.
• On the charge of the high capacity magazine, the court ruled that the state failed to introduce proper evidence that the device was a large capacity magazine. At trial they showed that the magazine could hold 16 rounds of ammunition, but they failed to show that it was operable with that many rounds of ammunition, and the court ruled that was required.
• On the issue of hollow nosed ammunition, Aitken argued that the statute was unconstitutionally vague. He also argued that the rule of lenity should apply, given that the statute didn’t exempt moving between residences, that it should based on a reading of the statute, which allows possession in the home.
• Aitken also made a Second Amendment claim, which the court summarily dismissed without any discussion. This is wrong.

So Aitken is still a convicted felon and prohibited person, because of the hollow nose bullet charge. I think he should appeal, and appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary.