Two of the three primary New Jersey GOP 2025 gubernatorial candidates have voiced their opinions on firearms. Veteran politician Jack Ciattarelli and media news personality Bill Spadea both tout that they support the Second Amendment. If the 2A is your issue, you’ll have to cut through the chaff and decide this June on who you’re going to support.
The Second Amendment in N.J. is a complex issue. Many lawmakers don’t even understand the laws that are on the books, never mind which ones need to be repealed, ordered unenforceable, or introduced to enhance rights. It’s easy for a political candidate to toss out the right talking points when speaking to certain audiences.
Considering the breadth of the topic, both candidate interviews should be listened to/viewed in entirety beyond this short synapsis. Ciattarelli HERE and Spadia HERE.
Who owns guns? Spadea says he owns firearms, however has not gone through the process to get a New Jersey permit to carry. Ciattarelli is not a gun guy, however he and his family he says enjoy clay shooting sports.
In 2022 the NYSRPA v Bruen Supreme Court opinion dictated that permitting officials could no longer use subjective standards when issuing permits to carry and that licensing schemes were to be “shall-issue.” New Jersey has had about 50,000 permit to carry applications put in since, indicating tens of thousands of times more permits being issued in comparison to pre-Bruen.
How do the candidates feel about this change in the law?
“I think it revealed what a hypocrite Phil Murphy truly is,” Ciattarelli opened with. “When this decision came down, he said, ‘Watch now, there’s gonna be a significant rise in violent crime.’ And yet, three months ago, he held a press conference talking about how violent crime is down in New Jersey. That’s the Phil Murphy that we’ve come to know and not at all respect because it’s hypocrisy. So people have a right, again, to defend themselves. They have a right to bear arms.”
“What Murphy and the Democrats and the weak Republicans allowed to happen is an insane limitation on where those firearms can be carried,” Spadea declared. “So we’ve gotta wake up and recognize that there are soft targets in our society, and those soft targets are best protected by making them harder for bad guys to get []. But you gotta supplement the hardening of these targets by making sure that law-abiding, legal citizens who want to protect and defend are empowered to do that.”
Both Spadea and Ciattarelli agree on the biggest threat to gun owners today and going forward. They both cite the Democratic stronghold and supermajority in the Garden State as the primary threat to gun rights.
As far as what moves they could take from Drumthwacket, Ciattarelli and Spadea both see the importance in having a proper attorney general working for them.
Ciattarelli offered that he’s willing to listen to Second Amendment advocacy groups when it comes to what moves should be made.
Spadea amplified his own message noting he’d “use the executive order.” Observing that “the governor in New Jersey has a tremendous amount of power when it comes to executive orders. We will reduce the burden on law abiding citizens and expedite their ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights by reducing the burden of regulation.”
The topic of reciprocity came up and Spadea and Cittarelli have differing views.
“I should have the right to carry in New Jersey because I can cross a couple of state borders and I’m legal to carry it,” Spadea says of reciprocity. “It makes no–it makes zero–sense that I would have to go through another set of regulations and jump through hoops. It makes zero sense. It’s a money grab and it’s a stalling tactic by left wing anti Second Amendment politicians who want to slow this legal, constitutional process.”
Cittarelli is more hesitant when it comes to the topic of reciprocity. “There’s concern on my part, in the sense, John, that other states don’t have the background check system that we do, and we know that there’s a mental health crisis all across the country,” Cittarelli says. “So if it’s much easier to obtain legally a firearm in other states than it is here, the reciprocity does concern me. I think our background check system works.”
That’s not to say Cittarelli is not open to discussions: “It’s my job to listen. If people lay my concerns, because they tell me ‘this,’ so they tell me that based on the facts they present, I’m all ears. But based on what I know today, the reciprocity does concern me, because other states do not have the background check system we do.”
One of the talking points that Spadea brought up was his support of so-called “Constitutional carry,” or permitless carry. He stated he’s in favor of that. When the candidates were approached with statistics dealing with subjective standards in permit denials – something verboten per footnote #9 in NYSRPA v. Bruen – Spadea seems to give deference to the issuing authority.
A recently released study from a group called Rise Against Hate found that subjective denials were being used more than 10 times more to deny a Black applicant a permit over whites. That troubling trend was only amplified in jurisdictions like Ocean county, where that denial rate is over 50 times more. These denials were not for any criminal history, but rather N.J.’s interest in public health, safety, and welfare statute.
Applicants must already be in possession of firearm identification cards, have received pistol purchase permits, and presumably passed a N.J. version of the NICS check to buy a pistol prior to applying. That’s at least three clean criminal background checks before applying for a permit to carry in New Jersey.
“I wouldn’t even address a ridiculous, out of context attack on gun rights by pretending that somehow the process is racist without looking at the reality of what are the questions being asked? Why were these folks denied? I mean, it’s very easy to use skin color as a means of riling people up, getting people upset, race baiting, pitting one group against another,” is what Spadea said about the data. “You know, we see this in the DEI hiring, which is why, thankfully, President Trump got rid of it. I’m going to get rid of it on day one in New Jersey. This idea of baiting people based on race is really disgusting. It’s disingenuous.”
“That sounds like profiling to me, and profiling is illegal, so if that’s going on, it needs to stop immediately,” Ciattarelli affirmed. “You know, yesterday, I was at the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey’s gubernatorial panel, and we’re hearing about how people in certain zip codes or with certain type[s] of backgrounds pay higher car insurance, even if they’ve got a perfectly fine driving record.
“Any and all forms of profiling are wrong, and any law-abiding citizen who’s applied for the gun permit should get their gun permit. One thing I will do is get the state police to work in closer partnership with our local PDs in accelerating the gun permit application process. In many cases, we know it’s taking too long.”
Those denials are predicated on the opinions of chiefs of police or staff of state police barracks. “I know a lot of these chiefs of police. I know a lot of the state troopers. I know a lot of these guys that are behind the application, that are there to make the approvals, and they’re upstanding and outstanding, upstanding citizens and outstanding members of law enforcement,” Spadea said about who makes the final decisions on the issuance of permits in the Garden State.
There’s a lot to what these two candidates had to say about the Second Amendment. To really dig in, as noted above, the full interviews should be listened to or watched. Whomever Republicans choose to vote for in the primaries might hinge upon several factors.
If the Second Amendment is one of those factors for you, here’s where you can find the rest of what these candidates had to say:
Spadia HERE and Ciattarelli HERE
State Senator Jon Bramnick, the other GOP candidate still running, has not responded to several and repeated attempts to schedule an interview. It’s alleged that he’s not only a gun owner, but that he also did go through qualifications to receive a permit to carry – however, he has not confirmed those details nor return requests for comment.
Ed “The Trucker” Durr, who was running in this race was interviewed prior to dropping out. If you’re interested in his perspective, you can find it HERE.
