WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans are still in the middle of a robust Second Amendment debate after the latest batch of statistically rare but dramatic “mass shootings.”
One politician says it’s time to go further and heavily regulate…
…rental vehicles?
It’s a common joke among Second Amendment advocates but yet, increasing regulations on rental vehicles (by tightening the rules for those who rent them) is really on the table.
Tighter rules are what freshman Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D, NJ-05) wants to accomplish with the aforementioned new legislation which would compel all United States auto dealers and rental agencies to share customer information with law enforcement.
The legislation — called the “Darren Drake Combating 21st Century Weapons Act” — is named after a New Milford, New Jersey man killed on New York’s West Side along with seven others. Gottheimer announced his bill in the same week as a terror attack in Toronto in which a rental vehicle was used to plow-down innocent pedestrians.
“This information exists. We know the FBI… they have several databases where they flag cases of terror threats and other threats of people who are violent criminals, and what this does is in real time… and we’ve been meeting with the rental companies already about this, and met with the Joint Terrorism Task Force – in real time, allow comparative information to go back and forth, and see if we’ve got a problem, and if the problem is flagged, it would go immediately to law enforcement,” Gottheimer told WCBS Radio 880 on Wednesday.
Not every North Jersey elected official is on board with Gottheimer’s plan.
“It’s pure insanity,” Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi (R-39) told Save Jersey. “Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t incentivize people on the terrorist watch list who are here illegally to come to New Jersey by promising sanctuary.”
Schepisi was referring to the pro-sanctuary state policies of Gottheimer’s close Garden State political ally, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.
Gottheimer faces his first reelection challenge this November in a district which is historically Republicans but which has trended Democrat in recent years due to demographic changes in the sprawling 5th’s Bergen County reaches.
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