New Jersey Governor and presidential hopeful Chris Christie dropped this video yesterday, explaining why he vetoed the ammunition magazine capacity bill that landed on his desk. The word “reload” was never mentioned. It’s all about the slippery slope. Which is nice, and it’s great that he vetoed the bill, but it’s also a shame. Someone needs to take on the antis’ argument that reloading is the pause that refreshes attempts to stop a spree killer. The simple truth is that anyone who depends on reloading to stop a spree killer (or gang banger) is almost as insane as the killer himself. Meanwhile, bad guys often attack in groups. And standard capacity magazines are protected against legal prohibition by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Like that.

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86 COMMENTS

  1. And then when/if he is in Office of the Pres… he will suddenly agree with their argument.

    • And he’ll certainly appoint Supreme Court justices who agree with gun control, just as he has done in NJ.

  2. If I ever find myself in a situation were I’m the only thing between my family and a criminal, I don’t want to play fair or give the criminal a sporting chance by artificially restricting the self-defense options available to me.

  3. Yup, we who carry are insane and paranoid… and live in a fantasy world, cause there’s no way we are trained or good enough to take out a bad guy on a shooting spree…

    but if we make him take 3 seconds after shooting 10 others first, why that there gives us a window with which we can disarm the bad guy!

    and we’re the one’s that live in the fantasy world.

  5. “Because I still want to be president and the yokels will crucify me next year if I don’t veto this. Holla back when I win.”

  6. Wasn’t the Gifford’s shooter tackled during a reload by a CCW holder? Tackling during a reload is theoretically possible, but it’s a crappy tactical situation. I’d much rather return fire. With the best handgun, ammo, and magazines I can carry.

    The presence of black market mags, pre-ban mags, and 3D printers makes a mag ban useless – kinda like the mag ban we Californians have.

    • Didn’t he also fumble the reload and wasn’t he tackled by multiple people? If some gun knowledge deficient indivdual wants to try tackling a shooter during a mag change – be my guest!

      • A woman who was already shot attempted to stop him while he reloaded, but he completed the reload and tried to shoot more, however the gun was either jammed or he bricked it, (possibly due to unreliable extended mag) and that’s when he got tackled.

        Nobody stopped his reload. That he was tackled because he had to reload was a myth.

        • Do you have a source, because I am sick of people saying “LOOK LOOK someone tackled someone reloading, ban high (standard) capacity clips (mags)!”

          EDIT: I just read that he dropped the mag on the ground and that was why he was tackled, not the he was tackled during a reload. So incompetence was the reason, not needing to reload (if the story I read is true).

      • The Gifford shooting was an outlier on so many levels. It was legal to carry there, he had a true high cap mag, and he was tackled after a mag malfunction. Only thing “normal” about it was he was bat crap crazy and everybody knew it.

        • I have to say I have never seen such a thing as a magazine malfunction on a Glock. And I have owned more than a few.
          BTW: What is a “true hi-capacity mag”? and where exactly did you get the definition from?

  8. I think NJ is a Constitution-Free Zone. Our gun rights will be severely restricted if the next governor is a Democrat. But until then, thanks for the veto Christie, I guess.

    • What do you mean if? It’s such a blue state we have no chance at all. If the Corzine scandals hadn’t surfaced there wouldn’t have been a Christie first term. We can thank the Dems for that idiot, Barbara Buono to guarantee a second term. Next time, we’ll get Sweeney or Codey and Wienstein’s dream of “confiscate, confiscate, confiscate” could be reality.

  10. Considering all that passes for politics in the NJ, NY, CT area, and the way that market’s mass media operates, Gov. Christy’s stand is darn near heroic. I don’t really care what his public explaination was for vetoing the bill, the IMPORTANT thing is he vetoed it. He vetoed it in NJ!!!!! NJ where Lautenburg used to live!!!!!! Yeah, THAT New Jersey!!!!! This is like poking the governors of NY and CT in the eye with a dirty poop covered sharp stick. I applaud the guy for what he did on this. Trust me that in NJ, it would have been so much easier for him to say, “Oh what the hell, let me sign the damn thing, so I can be buddies with my peers in the tri-state area.”

    • I hear you on that one. I live no where near that area and know nothing of the local politics but I honestly thought he was going to sign this, and then attempt to “recover” from it by taking pictures of himself hunting or sport shooting or some other meaningless gesture.

    • Nope, it ain’t, not after he has:

      1. done so much to help the gungrabbers by appointing judges friendly to their side and by opposing the judicial challenge to the NJ “law” against right-to-carry; and

      2. hardly done anything to persuade the general public of the rightness of the freedom to RKBA.

      The only reason he vetoed the bill is because he knew that signing it would hurt his chances in the GOP presidential race. But if I had to bet, I’d say he actually agrees with the bill.

    • I didn’t mean to imply that this one veto, makes him my hero. But with CT, NY, MD and DE all around the state, shoving piles of new laws on their citizens, I was truly shocked and surprised that he vetoed this.and talked more about the mental health issues that cause the mass shootings incidents of late. I left NJ during the Florio years (bad times for sure) but still work in NJ. Jobs in NJ pay a lot more than they do in PA, but that is another story. Maybe I’m too gullible, but I’d like to think that Gov. Christy has finally seen the light, and realized that the path of the former midget mayor of NYC is the road to Hell.

  11. I’m surprised he did this. I honestly thought he’d sign this law in glorious splendor, and completely turn his back on the second amendment, and still be so arrogant as to run under than platform.

    • Christie is a political opportunist. He saw that the number of people who emailed urging him to sign this bill wasn’t near the 1 million NJ gun owners (who vote btw), so the best option was to veto it. And of course there’s the next presidential election. It’s entirely possible that if he wasn’t considering running, he would have sold out the gun owners in a heartbeat. Blue-state Republicans are just a different flavor of Democrats.

      • No way there are 1 million legal gun owners in nj. Spent my whole life here.

        I know no one who votes gun rights over other issues.

        • What issues exactly?
          If you are disarmed the first thing that is going to happen is you are going to get blasted by the people that have them who want what you have. Welcome to Reality 101.

        • I can personally vouch for at least 4 people that vote pro-2nd Amendment issues over all others in NJ. Members of my family that haven’t quite yet completed their escape plans. And there is a decent sized shooting fraternity in the northwest corner of NJ, as well as the southern half of the state. There are still active trap and skeet clubs, and some indoor pistol ranges are still in business. Go to the Spruce Run reservoir public game lands on the first day of small game hunting and you may be surprised at the number of hunters.

  12. Christie is right, and I hope he follows through with this.
    The whole logical conclusion of zero argument can be applied to all major gun control in the last 30 years (or perhaps forever). The assault weapon ban? It’s intended purpose as stated by those who wrote it was to make military style rifles (in looks) harder to find. Nothing about saving lives.

    • Yeah, and at the time you could buy full auto Polish made AKM’s on the Black Market for about $65 each in lots of 10 per crate.

  13. I’m sorry, but there’s simply no way I would vote for his fat ass. Not now, not ever. And that’s coming from somebody very nearly as fat as he is (I’m 5-10, 295, any idea what he actually weighs these days?). Nothing to do with his explanation, everything to do with New Jersey and his character, or lack thereof. There is simply no such thing as a Republican, much less the conservative leader this country needs, in New Jersey (or New York, or any of several other states). There just isn’t.

    Tom

    • I agree. It’s too bad there aren’t more Toms from Georgia in the Republican primaries – or we wouldn’t have had Romney last time (or McCain before that, etc.).

  14. He’s STILL better than Hildebeast. Don’t think he’s got a chance in h#ll of winning. TOO fat, too abrasive and annoying, too NJ., too ugly and way too RINO. Obama wouldn’t have won without the looks thing. BTW Hildebeast’s book is doing poorly…I guess lies & BS isn’t entertaining…

    • What looks?
      Obomber “won” because the bankers had their hand up his BLEEP and wanted to squeeze the lemon one more time to their benefit.

    • I bet he smells bad too. It just looks like he stinks and needs a shower all the time.

    • And yet the so called liar Ed Klein’s book Blood Feud is doing much better than Hillary’s. No one has refuted the facts, only called him names in typical lefty fashion. It is tough to write books without sources stated e.g. Anonymous Sources however I think what is in his book is probably 90% true. We will see if Elizabeth Warren get endorsed instead of Hillary.

  15. “NJ Governor Christie: Why I Vetoed the Mag Cap Ban”

    Because you are doing the usual weaselly political “wind vane” maneuver like 99% of the politicians (Republican & Democrat alike) out there?

    Next question.

  16. “Someone needs to take on the antis’ argument that reloading is the pause that refreshes attempts to stop a spree killer.”

    Note that in NJ that maybe a very long pause according to Assemblyman Charles Mainor, Chairman of the NJ Law and Public Safety Committee. When asked during discussion of the bill, how long it takes to change a magazine, Mainor – who is a Jersey City Police Detective during his day job – told the Committee ’20-30 seconds’. That may tells us something about Mainor’s honesty, his intelligence, or the level of training of the Jersey City Police Department.

    • He’s probably thinking of how long it takes to PRINT a magazine on a DOT-MATRIX printer. That must be it.

      (Mainor. Yeesh.)

  17. NJ Governor Christie: Why I Vetoed the Mag Cap Ban

    Because he’ll get more votes in support of gun rights than votes supporting gun control. He knows it, we know it. Make no mistake however, if for one second he believes during his “service” that the majority supports gun control he would switch over. Or for example he was on his second term in a presidential office he would do whatever benefited him. The second term in the white house is the “whatever benefits me” term – as he cannot be re-elected, there is no more any point to run for senate or house, or any other seat because he is good to go with benefits for the rest of his life. Who cares about rights, or the moral decision? I am a politician – I scratch your back in my second term and you scratch mine after I leave office – deal?

  18. “Someone needs to take on the antis’ argument that reloading is the pause that refreshes attempts to stop a spree killer”

    No they don’t because to the average low information non-gunner that is difficult. Even then you arent necessarily going to change their mind.

    I actually am very impressed that Christie went at the heart of the issue. The reality is, the anti’s dont actually believe that the reload/pause/tackle scenario is any more valid that we do. So going after that is a losing battle. Christie stood up and said exactly why he disagrees with it… “because if you follow their logic it ultimately means 0… a complete gun ban” BINGO! he sees it, and isnt affraid to call them on it. He points out how completely arbitrary the mag limit is, and then systematically deduces why they care at all… they want us to have 0 bullets and 0 guns. His response “I dont agree and will not agree to this”. He is telling them to stop playing around and trying to fool people into thinking its about damage limitation, and calls them out for selling a broken solution that will only facilitate more broken solutions until the true goal is accomplished. I dont like a lot of things about Chris Christie, but this response is exactly what he needed to say to say to this. Don’t argue that he should take logic and facts to fight with someone who doesn’t care about that, the only way to win an argument with a liar is by telling the truth behind their lies. Cut it off at the root of the problem.

    • I agree. I’m not Christie’s biggest fan, but I’ll give him credit here. The standard ‘political’ thing to do would have been to hear the parents out again, and then do what he was going to do anyway (for all the reasons given above, the cynic in my says).

      That’s certainly what both the NJ Senate and Assembly did. Their committees listened to days of testimony for citizens, 95% of whom were against the bill, and then did exactly what they’d already decided to do beforehand. Christie had the stones to be up front about it.

    • + 1 for Paul T McCain

      (that might be the second time we agreed one something)

  21. The problem is that there just aren’t that many cases of killers empty mags into a group of people and reloading to do it again. So it’s hard to draw conclusions with such limited data. But to jump into the thick of it, part of the storyline of Newtown is how 6 y.o. Jesse Lewis shouted “Run” to his classmates when the killer paused to reload. Now, the boy’s family has suffered unbelievably, and I would hope they believe whatever they need to to keep going. But with the deafening sounds of an AR in a classroom and the smoke, it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to determine whether the killer was reloading or simply pausing to find the next victim. Particularly a child who likely never saw an AR, let alone one being fired and reloaded. There are some variations in the story of what happened in that classroom, and the most appealing one is how Jesse Lewis saved some of his classmates. But it doesn’t justify a) arbitrarily restricting magazine capacity or b) suggesting that waiting to pounce when the killer reloads is a realistic option when being shot at.

    • Beware of hoaxes designed to advance a political agenda. Just like the guy who supposedly rode one of the collapsing twin tower debris piles all the way to the ground on 9/11. He broke his legs but survived.
      HS….

  22. Somebody in NJ should propose that every reload be accompanied by a toll. That’ll fix the whole damn thing.

    • I laughed out loud and can see that you have actually been to NJ, the only state I know, where it’s free to get in, but costs you to drive out.

  23. This guy is a Clown. I hope I don’t have to choose between him and a Dem in 2016. I can nearly tell the difference between the

  24. If he really wants a chance at presidency, he should be actively trying to bring Shall-Issue to NJ.

    • Yeah. Good luck with that. With an anti-gun Dem-controlled legislature he would have as much chance as a fart in a windstorm.

      • Sometimes you push for a big achievement you know you won’t get so that you can get a few other smaller achievements. But pushing for nothing and just sitting back and vetoing from time to time will get you nowhere.

          • Not that I really need to clarify what I already wrote, but Christie has actually accomplished things in other arenas by pushing the Democratic legislature hard, such as on the budgets. He hasn’t gotten nearly as much as he wanted, but by pushing for more, he was able to get something.

            But on guns, he has never pushed at all. Hence, we have nothing at all, when we could have at least some small achievements, such as the elimination of certain ridiculous laws or judicial precedents (e.g., requiring citizens to abandon their homes to invaders rather than defend themselves if they can safely exit).

            But feel free to throw up your hands again and tell me, contrary to all evidence, that Christie just can’t be expected to do anything because of the Democratic legislature.

            • Excuse me, has nothing to do with the Legislature- has to do with the Governor.He is either with freedom or against it, not so?

  25. Gov’t does not protect you from people with the desire to harm you, no matter what they are armed with. It is impossible to do so without killing you themselves. People in prison are not even safe. Gov’t can’t even promise you that you’ll get fair-warning.

    Christie may have prevented NJ legislators momentarily, but I wouldn’t take my eyes off of the horizon. The enemy moves the fence-posts in 1′ per night.

    Don’t let anyone define who your enemies or heros are. You’ll always be missing the real ones.

  26. Anyone can be trained to reload with a round still in the chamber. It’s possible to kill someone while you’re reloading. With a shotgun, you could even keep the entire magazine in reserve if you fire one/load one. An attacker could also just pull a second firearm instead of reloading.

    Of course, to realize that, you’d have to have some gun people included in the conversation. And there’s never any room for that.

  27. This guy is an Obama in white skin. Every single thing he does is politically motivated towards his own political career and advancement.

    • Hey, watch whom you’re calling white!

      Greeks used to be considered dark-skinned, as were my own Slavic and Italian ancestors. In fact, the Greeks probably intermingled with the North Africans quite a lot over the centuries, as did the Italians.

      [Correction: Christie is of Italian and Irish descent, not Greek. My mistake. The point stands, though: he’s no honky.]

  28. More like, “I think I’m still running for president and if I signed i’d have a snowballs chance in hell anywhere.”

  29. “And standard capacity magazines are protected against legal prohibition by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution”.

    Excuse me, but what exactly is a “standard capacity magazine” and where are they mentioned in the Second???

    • Standard-capacity is the size of magazine the gun was optimally designed to use. And the operative clause of the Second Amendment says, “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That doesn’t mean your right to guns and not the ammunition, or your right to guns and not the magazines, or you right to bows and not the arrows, or your right to knife handles but not the blades.

      • BS, that is absolute nonsense.
        Nowhere anywhere in the doucment are any such terms either listed or defined.
        Best try again.

        • You might as well be arguing that the government can ban paper, pencils, pens, typewriters, computers, television, radio, etc…because those are not banning of free speech outright. “Arms” is a general term that also includes the central components of the arm. It doesn’t mean government can ban various central components of the weapon.

  30. It shouldn’t matter if reloading allows people to take down spree-killers. Banning all new gun sales could help stop spree killers some as well, but then you’re infringing on people’s rights.

    “High-capacity” magazine is a completely arbitrary term, determined by the gun control proponents

    If bad guys have to reload, then so will good guys. Politicians have NO RIGHT to be arbitrarily limiting the magazine size a person can use based on some arbitrary idea of what constitutes the “appropriate-sized” magazine for a person to use and based on the hypothetical situation that if a spree shooter must reload, then someone can tackle that person. Police use standard-capacity magazines for a reason.

    You could make the argument that if you ban guns that use detachable magazines altogether, that this makes it even more likely that one could take down a spree killer. Then you could make the argument that if you ban repeating arms altogether, and make people use single-shot rifles that are breech-loaders, it would give people more opportunity to take down a spree shooter.

    Then you could argue that outlawing breech-loaders and going back to muzzle-loaders would allow someone to take down a spree shooter.

    The appropriate-sized magazine is whatever you determine you need.

    • Go talk to the people down in Mexico, I do every day. They got tired of the BLEEP from their goobernment and they got the guns to protect themselves and their families. They no longer care what UNcle or the Federalis say.

  32. Stop!

    I haven’t read or listened to the link or comments. I’m just trying to go ahead and think up some other possibilities.

    Beats traffic problems.
    Whatever gets that damn Ferris wheel out of the water. “Oh no! We had a tropical storm in the northeast. It was a SUPER-STORM!”
    Ammo is the only thing selling in NJ.
    30 round magazine is slimming.
    This will teach Uncle Bloomberg not to come to my birthday.
    Barrack never called.
    I’m sick of people confusing me with Michael Moore.
    Snooki
    It sucks being known as the Governor of the State of New York’s Bitch.
    Fat guy in a little coat.

  33. He vetoed the bill to get voters that don’t pay attention to think he’s “conservative”. The fact that he’s only conservative in respect to Stalin is irrelevant to his campaign ads.

    Do not be fooled like you were with Obama!

  34. I like that he vetoed the magazine ban. It is not a realistic prospect that anyone in there lifetime will ever face a mass shooter. And if magazine capacity effects the number of victims harmed in a mass shooting, it is only a subset of mass shootings that the magazine capacity might effect number of victims if it does at all. Ordinary citizens need magazines holding over ten and fifteen rounds primarily for home defense situations that occur at night. When a person (or group of persons) enter your house at night it is likely that the only magazine you will have is the magazine in your gun. You will not have time to grab additional magazines which makes this situation very different from concealed carry. It is well known that low light conditions in police involved shootings causes police marksmanship to go down. Also, it is well know that police fire more rounds at armed perpetrators. Therefore, in a situation were a perpetrator is armed at night and when there are multiple offenders in a home defense situation, the home owner will need a magazine over 10 and 15 rounds. Only about 1 in 5 police bullets hits their mark and police have a 37% hit rate (per incidence rate). So yes, it is way more likely (though still a rare event) that lawful defense with a firearm will involve the need for magazines holding more than 10 and 15 rounds. There were more than 600,000 crimes involving four or more offenders according to the National Crime victimization Survey in 1993. It probably around 300,000 right now since crime has dropped.

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