By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Almost true to form, New Jersey Democrats are reeling in the wake of last week’s Third Circuit Court en banc ruling striking down the state’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and “large-capacity magazines,” and are already trying to figure ways to skate around the court decision.
Politico is reporting that Garden State Democrats are stymied following “a long line of judicial decisions that have poked holes in New Jersey’s expansive gun laws.”
While anti-gun Democrat Gov. Mikie Sherrill promised on the campaign trail last year to defend and even expand New Jersey’s restrictive gun controls, the court rulings are telling her otherwise. Still, Political reported, she is determined to push more gun laws “even at the risk of getting slapped down by the courts yet again.”
Republican Assemblyman Brian Bergen was quoted in the Politico article stating, “The ruling happened, it’s the ruling. They can challenge it. But what I don’t want to see them do is throw all kinds of bills against the wall to see what sticks.”
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms weighed in Thursday, suggesting to New Jersey Democrats that they “Stop trying to dance around court rulings and start trusting the citizens with their Second Amendment rights.”
“New Jersey Democrats can no longer claim they’re just trying to protect the children or decrease crime,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed in a statement to the media. “They’re obviously obsessed with restricting the rights of the citizens they’re supposed to be serving. Gov. Mikie Sherrill and her colleagues in the legislature need a refresher course in high school civics, because they can’t seem to understand that when a court declares a law to be unconstitutional, that law has always been unconstitutional, and they should stop trying to dream up ways to slither around the ruling.”
The Guardian noted that the Third Circuit ruling was the first of its kind. No other federal appeals court has struck down a state ban on semi-auto rifles, which have been erroneously called “assault weapons.”
And Politico reported that New Jersey Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald has suggested that his “long-languishing bill to mandate gun owners store their firearms unloaded and locked inside their homes” (A3560), might be considered.
There’s just one possible problem with that strategy, as noted by CCRKBA’s Gottlieb. The Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller ruling said such a requirement would also violate the Second Amendment. Gottlieb suggested that Gov. Sherrill and her Democrat allies should read the Heller opinion.
“What the Politico story reveals without really saying so is that Garden State Democrats are frustrated and furious the courts, and the Constitution, will not let them keep a regulatory stranglehold on the honest citizens of New Jersey,” Gottlieb said. “They’re just not taking this lesson to heart. The semi-auto ban, and the ban on original capacity magazines—which Democrats supported—have just been thrown out. There’s a lesson in that the Democrats are evidently just too stubborn to accept. They need to grow up, stop trying to be dictators, and acknowledge the right of the people is not subject to their petty personal prejudices against guns.”
