March 25. 2025.Yesterday, the New Jersey Assembly passed a group of fast-tracked bills targeting gun rights instead of punishing criminal behavior.The vote was primarily along party lines, with some notable exceptions.

Faced with a national wave of public outrage at government waste, fraud, and abuse during an election year, New Jersey Democrats instead are trying to change the subject to distract the public from focusing on their own failures.Instead of going after criminals, they are instead attacking gun rights to take the focus off themselves.

The list of anti-gun bills passed in the Assembly includes the following:

A4975 Creates a crime for possession of digital instructions to illegally manufacture firearms or firearm components. This legislation creates a crime even if someone never actually produces a gun or component. Simply having a digital file for a component on your computer will result in a presumption that you intended to illegally manufacture, and it will turn innocent gun owners into criminals.

A4976 establishes the crime of "reckless discharge" of firearms. Discharging a firearm in self-defense would be treated as a crime, with the burden on the victim to prove that the firearm was fired “for a lawful purpose,” which is an affirmative defense. This is nothing more than an attack on concealed carry. Now, every time a firearm is used, even in legitimate self-defense situations, prosecutors will have more tools to harass law-abiding gun owners. There is also no exception for accidental discharges, and last-minute amendments presume that self-defense use of firearms is unlawful and place the burden on honest gun owners to prove that their conduct ina self-defense situation was legal.

A1389 requires confiscation of ammunition and firearms components in response to domestic violence restraining orders or convictions. This bill applies to mere accusations, even false accusations, not just convictions. Current law already requires confiscation of firearms, but this bill is absurd as it would now require confiscation of components like spare grips, scope caps, cleaning kits, choke tubes, holsters and slings.

A5345 mandates the use of Merchant Category Codes. This is nothing more than government sanctioned snooping that can be used to create a further firearms registry or discriminate against gun owners and lawful businesses.

A4981 is the "gun owner gulag" on steroids -- it allows imprisonment before trial for an unlimited amount of time when someone is merely accused of a firearms offense.If someone is just ACCUSED of a gun crime, the government gets to lock them up and throw away they key while they await trial to determine if those accusations are true.This bill turns the bedrock presumption of innocence until proven guilty on its head.

Notably, two Republicans voted for these attacks on gun rights, and two Democrats voted against them (Republicans Michele Matsikoudis and Nancy Munoz (D21) voted YES, and Democrats David Bailey and Heather Simmons (D3) voted NO).

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