ANJRPC SUES TO THROW OUT
CORZINE'S ONE GUN A MONTH LAW!
Federal Lawsuit
Comes in Direct Response to Lawmakers' Broken Promise to Create a
Meaningful Exemption for Honest Collectors and Competitors
Following is the
Text of an ANJRPC Press Release
issued on January 17, 2010
The
Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC) announced
today that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District
Court for the District of New Jersey to invalidate New Jersey's one
gun a month law, in direct response to lawmakers' broken promise to
create a meaningful exemption for gun collectors and competitors in
the handgun rationing law.
According to ANJRPC President Scott Bach, "Criminals laugh at
Corzine's new law, which they can easily thwart, and which fails to
punish criminal behavior. It's a thinly disguised attempt to ration
the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens."
"Lawmakers promised that Corzine's Firearms Task Force would deliver
a meaningful exemption for honest gun collectors and competitors,
who were not the target of the law. Instead, they rammed through a
largely useless and offensive scheme requiring registered gun owners
to beg further permission and show why it is not 'feasible or
practical' to ration their Constitutional rights every time they
wish to make an exempt purchase – a nearly impossible standard to
meet," said Bach. "Lawmakers blatantly broke their promise and
turned the Task Force into a Task Farce when it came to
protecting the Constitutional rights of honest citizens. Their
actions forced us to sue, and have now jeopardized the very
existence of their feel-good law."
The lawsuit is based on a federal statute that pre-empts state and
local laws regulating the sale of certain firearms. The new law runs
directly afoul of that statute because of the way New Jersey’s
ultra-strict laws sweepingly define firearms. The suit also asserts
claims based on the failure of the State Police to implement
procedures under the new law, as well as the unlawful rationing of
handgun permits by individual municipalities. A copy of the
complaint is available at
http://www.anjrpc.org/NJ_OGM_Complaint.pdf
New Jersey’s one gun a month law was passed by the legislature in
June by a single vote, despite overwhelming evidence that it could
be easily circumvented by criminals, failed to address real sources
of trafficking, and targeted only law-abiding citizens. Gun
rationing laws passed in other states have either been shown
ineffective or repealed.
Ironically, the New Jersey law ignores known sources of New Jersey
gun trafficking, like the Fedex gun theft ring that stole hundreds
of handguns from legal shipments in 2008 and distributed them
illegally on the streets of Jersey City and Newark. The law only
regulates conduct by law-abiding citizens who have been thoroughly
investigated by law enforcement and certified by the State as
acceptable to own firearms.
Here's something to think about:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's estimates for 2008 NJ has
2.84% of the total US population. The latest estimates from the FBI,
based upon the increased number of NICS checks for firearms
purchases, is there are now 90 million gun owners
in the US. Assuming all of the gun owners are evenly distributed throughout the population
then NJ’s 2.84% would amount to 2,556,000 gun owners living
in NJ.
And as one must be 18 or older to purchase a gun in NJ, all of them
are also eligible to vote.
Here's something else to think about:
On September 12, 2009 something
over 1 million* ordinary citizens held a march in Washington, D.C. to
protest the excesses of our Federal Government. That's over a
million citizens who, without a political party, without a major
organization, and substantially on their own personal initiative
traveled from all over the country just to express their insistence
that their alleged representatives had better stop violating the
Constitutional limits placed upon the government or else those
representatives would be held accountable for their egregious
behavior.
And that's only the million who were available to
travel to the city that day. How many others feel the same way but
weren't able to attend?
*The
Park Service has an office which estimates the size of crowds by
looking at aerial photographs, compares those to prior events, and
estimates the crowd. That office says it was 1.2 to 1.6 million
See Volunteers’
Gallery for photos of our volunteers in action. Click
Here
to volunteer.
“[T]he
Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document.” —Supreme
Court Justice Antonin Scalia
“Gun
advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone
wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so.”
—John Stossel
"You do realize that a criminal does
look to make sure there are no cops around before he attacks you,
right? Remember that old saying about there's never a cop around
when you need one? Well that's the reason. You will ALWAYS be on
your own if you are attacked. The cops will be there later, after
the criminal has finished." - S. Potts, Personal Protection
Instructor
