TRENTON, N.J. – The New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee advanced eight bills on Thursday designed to make the Garden State’s gun control laws even more restrictive.
NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt not only criticized the legislation but also members of his own party who aren’t speaking out in defense of legal gun owners.
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“It’s time that New Jersey Republicans stop worrying about who they might offend and start standing up for what they believe in. That includes protecting the rights of New Jersey’s legal gun owners,” said Steinhardt, a practicing attorney and Warren County Republican. “Democrats are waging an all-out war on gun ownership and ignoring the scourge of gun violence. While they demand broader restrictions on legal owners, they turn their blind eye toward common sense policing that would identify and punish violent offenders. Democrats have even gone so far as to try to give violent criminals political power by making them voters.”
New Jersey is one of the country’s most anti-Second Amendment states. The notorious Graves Act imposes mandatory jail sentences for possession violations, regularly snagging otherwise lawful gun owners for mere technicalities (like transporting a firearm or ammunition through New Jersey that is illegal here but perfectly legal in the accused party’s state of origin).
Governor Murphy is also seeking steep new fees on gun owners in his proposed FY 2020 budget.
“Tell the Attorney General and County Prosecutors that we want people who commit a crime using a gun to be treated with the same seriousness that legislators and law enforcement advocate treating people who legally own own one,” Steinhardt added. “Let’s send a message to America that New Jersey believes that every freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights matters; we don’t pick and choose some to celebrate and some to undermine. Ultimately, let’s treat gun violence for the crime it is and stop treating legal gun owners like the criminals they aren’t.”
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