| June 21, 2022. The agenda for Wednesday’s Assembly Judiciary Committee meeting was amended last night to add 5 new pieces of legislation targeted at law-abiding gun owners, including multiple new gun bans! Assembly democrats are doubling down and piling on to move Gov. Murphy’s ill-conceived, off-target attempt to damage gun rights instead of severely punishing violent gun criminals and focusing on mental health issues related to firearms ownership. Gov. Murphy is jeopardizing the political future of legislators, pressuring them to enact old, discredited proposals conceived by gun ban extremists trying to end gun rights instead of going after gun criminals. PLEASE IMMEDIATELY CLICK HERE TO CONTACT EVERY LEGISLATOR IN THE STATEHOUSE. COPY AND PASTE THE ANALYSIS BELOW INTO YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM AND TELL LAWMAKERS TO OPPOSE GOV. MURPHY’S MISGUIDED GUN PACKAGE AND INSTEAD SEVERELY PUNISH GUN CRIME AND ADDRESS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES RELATED TO FIREARMS. -Bans the .50 BMG rifle in New Jersey. Demonizes one particular tool, rather than punishing someone who misuses ANY tool, not just this one. -The .50 BMG is not a gun that criminals use or can even afford. The firearm is large, heavy (sometimes 30 pounds or more), and typically costs over $10,000. It is a firearm owned by wealthy professionals and hobbyists, not thugs. Banning it will make no one safer. -Banning any kind of hardware never makes anyone safer. The only ones who follow hardware bans are law-abiding citizens, who are not the problem to begin with. Criminals IGNORE hardware bans and do whatever they please. And if one particular tool becomes unavailable due to a ban, criminals will just use a different tool. -Rather than ban one particular type of hardware, lawmakers should instead severely punish violent criminal actions using ANY tool, not just the .50 BMG. Target the criminal, not the tool! BANNING GUNS WITHOUT USELESS “MICROSTAMPING” TECHNOLOGY THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST (A-4368) -So-called “microstamping” is an utterly flawed, easily-defeated, imagined technology that has been thoroughly discredited for decades. In reality, no manufacturers employ microstamping, so mandating that dealers eventually carry microstamping firearms once the NJ Attorney General declares that they exist, is little more than a gun-ban-in-waiting. Patterned after NJ’s failed “smart gun” law, the goal is to try to force incubation of the technology, mandate that dealers carry it, and then eventually ban ownership of everything else. -One of the reasons microstamping is a theoretical technology doomed to failure, is that the technology can so easily be defeated in multiple ways. Filing away microstamped information on firearms parts, changing the parts themselves, natural wear and tear from use, using firearms such as revolvers which do not expel brass (it stays with the firearm until manually expelled later), or even by picking up and removing ejected brass from a scene – all of these show how weak, vulnerable, and unreliable microstamping would be if employed. -Most crime guns are stolen or unlawfully acquired, so even if the technology did work, firearms tracing would most likely not lead to actual wrongdoers, but rather to honest citizens who once owned that firearm at some point in its ownership history. -Microstamping has no law enforcement benefit whatsoever. It is just another excuse to frivolously ban firearms, by eventually mandating a technology that doesn’t work (and currently doesn’t exist) and then banning everything else. BANNING GUN OWNERSHIP UNLESS YOU’VE HAD TRAINING (A-4370)
-Mandates firearms training as a precondition to receiving NJ firearm credentials needed to own firearms. Mandates renewal of firearms ID card every four years. -No one believes that firearms training is a bad thing. While gun owners SHOULD get training, the right to OWN firearms is a fundamental Constitutional right, so conditioning the exercise of that right on predicate acts is inappropriate and unconstitutional. We are speaking of mere OWNERSHIP (rather than carrying) of firearms. Many firearms owners acquire firearms as investments or family heirlooms, and never even fire a shot, so a universal training mandate is overbroad. -The safety goal implied in a training requirement can easily be achieved nevertheless by INCENTIVIZING training rather than MANDATING it. The state could offer meaningful incentives and benefits to those who receive training, including expedited permit processing, waiver of permitting fees, and income tax deductions. -Mandating training as a condition of exercising a fundamental right is in reality an unconstitutional ban of that right. Just as one cannot be barred from free speech until they have taken a public speaking class, they cannot be barred from OWNERSHIP of firearms until they have had training. -Requiring renewal of the FID card every four years will seriously disrupt the Constitutional right to acquire firearms. NJ is legendary for absurd delays in its licensing process, which is supposed to be accomplished within 30 days but in reality takes many months or even years to accomplish depending on the municipality. Instead of automatic expiration and a dilatory and inconsistent renewal process, the FID card should remain good until revoked, with the potential for revocation at any time, based on annual database sweeps for criminal convictions which disqualify someone from firearms ownership. The information needed to reconfirm eligibility is widely available electronically, and there is no need to shut off someone’s fundamental rights to conduct a time-consuming manual check that can be accomplished digitally in seconds in the background. BANNING POSSESSION OF DEFENSIVE BALLISTIC SHIELDS FOR PERSONAL PROTECTION (A-4369) -Possession of body armor in NJ is already unlawful. Apparently, this new legislation will make it more unlawful. More significantly, the bill bans body armor generally, and creates a licensing and registration scheme for exempted owners, which do not even include civilians who want to own body armor for personal safety. -Reflexively banning any tool because it has been misused by one person will not prevent it from being misused in the future by those who do not follow the law. But banning it or creating a cumbersome and time-consuming permitting process will prevent or delay positive uses of that same tool by those whose lives it may save. -For example, ballistic shields used in backpacks, bookbags, or clothing have the potential to be used defensively by civilians to save lives when a person or group comes under attack. Yet civilians are not explicitly recognized as eligible even to become licensed owners under this bill. Shouldn’t public policy recognize this reality, and instead of demonizing a particular tool and prohibiting it from nearly everyone, severely punish the misuse of that tool by anyone? 10 YEARS IN JAIL FOR ITEMS LEGALLY ACQUIRED
(A-4367) -Upgrades penalties from third to second degree (up to 10 years in jail) for certain crimes, including transporting a manufactured firearm without a serial number. -Those who obtained such firearms legally prior to 1968 may still unwittingly have them, and could face up to 10 years in jail under this bill, without eligibility for PTI (pre-trial intervention, a first-time offender leniency program). -For example: (i) thousands of un-serialized Connecticut Valley Arms (CVA), Traditions, and Thompson Center, etc. muzzle-loader hunting gun kits were legally acquired by NJ gun owners during this period; (ii) thousands of unserialized pre-1968 shotguns and .22’s were sold legally in New Jersey; and (iii) certain classes of North American Arms mini-revolvers (pager-grip) and High Standard derringers (wallet holsters) were sold legally in New Jersey but now have features or accessories that have been made unlawful. No one who acquired these items lawfully should now face up to 10 years in prison with no PTI eligibility and face a presumption of incarceration. | 
