Kean: “Criminals and Terrorists Do Not Follow Our Laws”
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
The New Jersey State Senate passed S993 on Monday by a largely party-line vote of 22-17, Save Jerseyans, approving its own version of wildly-unconstitutional legislation reducing magazine capacity in the Garden State from 15 to 10 rounds. [Note: the Assembly version is A2006.] Steve Sweeney’s chamber also passed A2777, a companion bill designed to dramatically limit residents’ ability to transport firearms, by a similar margin of 21-17.
One silver lining? The Senate GOP came out strong against it.
Republican Leader Tom Kean, Jr. told his Facebook following that he voted against S993 “…because criminals and terrorists do not follow our laws and will not reduce their magazines from 15 rounds to 10 rounds; This bill does nothing to improve public safety, distracts from the productive solutions of tackling mental health and illegal gun trafficking and subjects our responsible and caring friends and neighbors to jail time for no good reason.”
Sen. Kean also slammed A2777 as “a distraction of a bill that does not address any issue and could give people a false sense of security.”
“Again, I urge this legislature to focus on doing things to actually curb day-to-day violence in New Jersey by addressing mental health issues, gun trafficking, gang issues, social issues and education issues,” Kean continued.
Both modified measures now head back to the Assembly for approval of Senate changes before heading to Governor Chris Christie’s desk for the moment of truth.
The takeaway lesson? A familiar one for regular readers: we can’t change New Jersey without taking back the State Senate. Period. End of sentence.
If someone could amend the bill to include a financial compensation clause for surrendered magazines or expected revenue costs due to incarceration of law-abiding citizens they could kill this bill quickly.
Thank you Sen Kean. The Democrats want to give New Jerseyans another reason to leave.