Reader Josh L. sends the latest news from the Garden State:

I thought you would be interested to see the report on guns and violence that was just released by Gov. Christie’s appointed SAFE Task Force committee.

Pages 3 – 23 are most relevant to guns, with the recommendations for gun restrictions summarized on page 23.  In sum, the report begins with the wrong assumptions and arrives at worse conclusions.  Politically, it does not leave the governor any space to avoid significant and completely unconstitutional gun restrictions.  I hope the governor will not give in, but I can’t say I’m optimistic.

Here are the summary titles of for each of the task force’s recommendation. See the attached PDF for all the gory details.

  • Clarify the Effect of Involuntary Outpatient Civil Commitment on an Applicant’s Eligibility to Obtain a Firearm Purchaser Identification Card or Handgun Purchase Permit
  • Clarify an Applicant’s Duty to Disclose His or Her History of Mental Health/Addictions Evaluation and Treatment
  • Require that Firearms Purchaser Identification Cards be Renewed
  • Periodically Require Courts to Order the Surrender or Seizure of Firearms Purchaser Identification Cards and Firearms Upon Conviction of a Crime, or Upon Involuntary Commitment
  • Ensure Appropriate Punishment for the Failure to Comply with a Court Order to Surrender Firearms Purchaser Identification Cards or Firearms
  • Ensure Appropriate Punishment for the Failure to Comply with a Court Order to Surrender Firearms Purchaser Identification Cards or Firearms
  • Authorize Courts to Order the Seizure of a Person’s Firearms Following an Arrest or Initiation of Civil Commitment Proceedings
  • Encourage and Facilitate the Voluntary Surrender of Lawfully-Owned Firearms for Safekeeping During Periods of Crisis
  • Ensure Appropriate Punishment for the Unlawful Possession of, or Attempt to Acquire, Ammunition
  • Enhance Security Procedures for Remote Ammunition Purchases
  • Modernize Firearms Purchaser Identification Cards to Include Cardholder Photographs
  • Require Sellers to Verify Buyers’ Identity
  • Ensure Appropriate Punishment for Tampering with Official Firearms Documents or False Personation
  • Require Purchasers to Declare Their Intention to Transfer Purchased Firearms/Ammunition to Another
  • Enact a New Criminal Law to Specifically Prohibit ”Straw Purchases”
  • Require Sellers to Report Tampering or False Information in the Course of a Firearms/Ammunition Transaction
  • Establish an Interstate Agreement to Share Information

49 COMMENTS

  1. He will fold like a cheap hooker…no wait, hookers are Sen Menendez’s thing. But seriously, Christie will do it for the Boss. Bruce or Barack, you pick em.

    • He screwed any chance of being “president” when he did his “kiss the obungler’s butt” photo op after the hurricane….

        • You’re assuming that he won’t change parties. He might come across as a “more moderate Democrat” if he did switch.

        • That’s funny, TotenGlocke, ’cause as you know as well as anyone, the GOP primary voters love them some RINOs. Just look at all the nominees since Reagan.

    • If he wants to be president he’ll have to switch parties after he helped BO get reelected.

      • He was kissing ass to get the money he needed to help his constituents. I don’t trust him on guns but he gets shit done

        • So, it’s OK to sell out your morals as long as you “get s*** done”. Doing whatever you need to do get s*** done is just fine as long as the ends justify the means. Well, Joe Stalin, ALLLRIGHTYYYY THEN!

        • Stalin got the wrong things done, for the wrong reasons. The chunky gov had better do the right thing.

        • He was looking out for number 1, which is the official pastime of politicians in the state of NJ. And he hasn’t done much of anything, apart from suck on the national teat. His budgets have been larger than his Democratic predecessors. He makes a lot of noise, but his actions are weak at best, destructive at worst.

    • The trouble, I think, is two-fold:

      1. Christie has grown very popular as of late in NJ – far more popular than he ever was before state-wide (as opposed to nationally) – by moving left, and I think he rather enjoys being very popular.

      2. Worse, he probably believes that he does NOT need to be on the right to win the GOP’s nomination for president. As evidence, he would point to the party’s recent nominees – McCain and Romney (not to mention a few others we might add to the list). And frankly he has a point here. The GOP base has not been successful in rallying around a single conservative candidate in the primaries.

      So he will be the Romney of 2016, and we’ll see if the GOP base falls for it once more.

      • F that. I’m voting for Rand Paul as of this point whether he’s a Republican or Independent.

        • A little LESS crazy? What are you smoking? Ron Paul is living proof that any of the founders could not even get a nomination in this day and age.

        • Ron Paul lost me at free trade with Iran. “Hey, we have nukes, who are we to tell someone else they can’t have them?”

          I would love for our foreign policy to move in Ron Paul’s direction of isolationism, but I don’t believe in betraying our allies. If you screw over your friends you’ll soon find you don’t have any.

        • @Gov

          Remember, only one country has been irresponsible enough to use nukes – the US you worship so much. The US government has no right to tell others they can’t be trusted with nukes we’re the US government is the only nation to have used them.

        • Totenglocke, you sound like a libtard hippy girl with that statement. Comparing the use of the A-bomb in the mid-40’s against the empire of Japan with Iran (circa 2013) is batshit. Those bombs saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and MILLIONS of Japanese. We did not fully know the effects of radiation at the time. The Japanese did NOT surrender after the 1st bomb, or the 2nd bomb THREE days later (the same day the Soviet Union entered the war against them). Hell, they did not surrender over a week later when their war council was DEADLOCKED on a vote on whether to surrender or fight to the death. Only the emperor finally did what was right…..a good thing because we had no more bombs for several months afterwards.
          They had moved troops and civilians to key positions on the Japanese mainland for the INVASION that would come later, when every single Japanese would fight to the death. It would have been a nightmare without those bombs.

        • Patty, go ahead and make up whatever excuses you need for why The Almighty US should be allowed to nuke anyone they please for any reason they please, yet no other country should be allowed to have the same power.

          It doesn’t change the fact that you believe the US is somehow “different” and thus justified in mass murder.

        • Totenglocke, you didn’t even try to respond to his arguments, which were based on historical fact (and he didn’t even discuss how many thousands of people were dying of starvation, overwork, and disease every single month in the Japanese slave empire that stretched from India to Manchuria to the Philippines).

          You’ve made it clear enough that you despise what the U.S. did against Japan in WW2, but you’ve not offered any justification for your position.

        • @Motha – That’s because he didn’t make any fact based arguments. He used arguments that have been proven several times to have been untrue, but the myth persists 70 years later.

          Also, I never said I despised what the US did. I said that it’s a joke for the US to say that using nukes is horrible and non-NATO countries shouldn’t be allowed to have them because they are too irresponsible not to use them, yet the US is the only country to have actually used a nuclear weapon.

          I get it though. For some insane reason you are like many other gun owners and worship the US government (the very one that would gladly line you up and execute you for your desire to own guns), thus anything it does is “good” and any country that disagrees with it is “evil”.

        • Again, you offer nothing to substantiate your position.

          I don’t worship the government any more than the Anti-Federalists did, but I don’t see the point of blaming the government – or, in this case, Pres. Truman – for making the right decision.

  2. Most of those just sound like bureaucratic nonsense, I can’t wait until Massachusetts finally goes completely insane and makes CT and NY look like pansies. Sigh…I need to move.

    • I wish they were just bureaucratic nonsense. That would be bad enough, but not pose much more of a substantial threat to our liberty than what is already in place in NJ (which is horrendous, mind you). But it’s far, far worse.

      Here is one little example from the committee’s nauseating recommendations (see first full paragraph on p. 15): they want to make it a fourth-degree crime (a NJ term for a type of FELONY) not to secure your guns if it is likely a minor will have access.

      In other words, even if no harm occurs, the fact that you haven’t locked up your guns or otherwise stored them so that someone 17 or younger cannot get to them will subject you to a possible 18-month stretch in jail plus fines.

      That’s just one recommendation among many, many others.

  3. Periodic FID card renewals? Yea, maybe if it didn’t take six months to get an FID card….. and then two weeks for a NICS check. The system they’ve got now is so broken it’s pathetic, and they want to add more red tape? What a joke.

    • Herein lies the issue. The grabbers are always claiming we need to “improve” the background checks. That is a complete red herring. The system they stated would be the end all in keeping undesirables from getting weapons is now, all of a sudden, not good enough. Face it people, NOTHING will ever be good enough for them, short of complete disarmament.

    • UPDATE: NJ Democratic Politicians Complain That the Committee’s Recommendations Don’t Go Nearly Far Enough

      “”It does not require universal background checks, there is no ban on .50 caliber assault-style weapons, and it punts on the reduction of large magazines,” added the Democratic candidate for governor, Barbara Buono, who appeared beside state Sen. Richard Codey (D-27), a former governor.

      http://www.politickernj.com/node/64588#ixzz2QAkiQerV

  4. Honestly those items make no sense whatsoever. He must have been in a hurry to get it done before his afternoon snack of 20 dorito chip bags.

  5. “Encourage and Facilitate the Voluntary Surrender of Lawfully-Owned Firearms for Safekeeping During Periods of Crisis”

    Are they crazy………this is when you need it the most.

      • In Katrina they confiscated guns, and anti’s think that was a good thing. (of course they confiscated guns from law abiding citizens…. )

    • Boy, you said it.

      And what is the government doing even “ENCOURAGING” people not to exercise their natural (and constitutional) right to self-defense? We’d never tolerate the government’s encouragement to cut down on our talking or reading, or to refrain from having jury trials in criminal cases, or to permit the police to enter without a warrant.

    • You wouldn’t want to hurt someone during a riot, so I guess when George goes free they will want your guns, Randy

  6. Excuse my ignorance but what does the following mean:

    1. Clarify the Effect of Involuntary Outpatient Civil Commitment on an Applicant’s Eligibility to Obtain a Firearm Purchaser Identification Card or Handgun Purchase Permit

    2. Clarify an Applicant’s Duty to Disclose His or Her History of Mental Health/Addictions Evaluation and Treatment

    3. Authorize Courts to Order the Seizure of a Person’s Firearms Following an Arrest — What type of an arrest? Can this apply to someone who has been arrested for being at a peaceful protest against a cause?

    4. Encourage and Facilitate the Voluntary Surrender of Lawfully-Owned Firearms for Safekeeping During Periods of Crisis – A program should be established that would allow a person to voluntarily turn over firearms to law enforcement authorities for safekeeping when the owner of the firearms or any other person (e.g., other members of the household, parents, etc.) is concerned that the weapons might pose a danger of harm as a result of a mental health condition or crisis.

    So would I have to voluntary turn over my firearm if my neighbor says they pose a danger? This has the makings of a gun-grab

  7. WTF does this mean???

    “Encourage and Facilitate the Voluntary Surrender of Lawfully-Owned Firearms for Safekeeping During Periods of Crisis”

    • Sounds a lot like “Katrina”. Because taking peoples’ best means of self-defense during a total (albeit temporary) breakdown of social order and public services is the best waay to keep people SAFE.

    • Ascrod probably has it right.

      I disagree with their solution however. My firearms are perfectly safe in my hands … no criminals are going to take them out my hands.

    • There are people stupid enough to turn over their weapons during natural disasters and NJ is trying to oblige them.

  8. By 2016 The Hipster, with the accent on hips, will be a Demondrat. All he needs is a f’n horn and the rhino-i-zation would be complete. I can see Barry telling him “Chris,…. I am you fah-zar” The C’s will be better off without Fatso, Toomey, Graham, and Mc Lame for a start. This is the worst pantomime parody of democracy in action I have ever witnessed. And I’m an old SOB.

  9. This was my favorite:

    “Authorize Courts to Order the Seizure of a Person’s Firearms Following an Arrest or Initiation of Civil Commitment Proceedings”

    … thus citizens are now guilty until proven innocent?

    And society would be more safe if any police officer could immediately conduct a full strip search of anyone, anywhere, any time, for any reason or even no reason. That doesn’t mean we should do it.

    We need to eliminate the “safety trumps all” carte blanche mindset. Human dignity trumps all. All laws should uphold human dignity. Laws and policies that do that necessarily improve public safety.

    • Depriving one of personal property while suspending 2nd amendment rights based on accusations. Very nice indeed.
      This is why I refer to it as the Democratic People’s Republic of New Jersey. The state flag should also be changed to a simple design with a red star.

  10. All this is required because stores in NJ sell fully automatic weapons to school children at the local mall. There are no restrictions on guns of any kind. Arms dealers consider the Garden State the best place to do business and by God something has to be done.

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