New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed gun control legislation, urging lawmakers to loosen up gun regulations instead. [Source: dogtrainerlinks.com]
Senior Editor
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed two new Garden State gun control bills in late August, and then called the state’s current gun laws “among the most unreasonable and onerous in the country.”
According to NJ1015 News, Christie didn’t stop there. He chastised lawmakers for trying to make things tougher on Garden State gun owners when they should be making the laws more user-friendly.
“I continue to oppose the relentless campaign by the Democratic legislature to make New Jersey as inhospitable as possible to lawful gun ownership and sales,” Christie said. “Instead of remaining an outlier with overly burdensome restrictions of questionable constitutionality, New Jersey should follow the lead of the vast majority of states across the country and simplify, not complicate, the ability of responsible citizens, dealers and retailers, to buy, sell and possess firearms as protected by the Second Amendment.”
His remarks garnered support from Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs.
“Not only has he rejected their medieval schemes to block self-defense,” Bach said in a statement, “but he has fired back in a way that forces them to choose squarely between citizen empowerment or victimization in the post-Orlando era of terror attacks on U.S. soil. The inescapable truth is that government cannot protect you when evil strikes — the only solution is citizen empowerment, and it is the legal, moral and Constitutional imperative of government to facilitate and not block self-defense.”
But all is not sunshine and roses for the Republican former presidential candidate. Democrat lawmakers blasted the governor.
Bergen County Democrat Assemblyman Gordon Johnson called Christie’s conditional vetoes “shameful.” According to NJ1015 News, Johnson accused Christie of having “once again put his political ambitions above the public safety of New Jersey residents.”
New Jersey’s stringent gun laws came under heavy criticism in 2015 when Carol Bowne, a resident of Berlin Township, was brutally stabbed to death in her own driveway by a man against whom she had a protection order. Bowne had applied for a permit to buy a handgun in April, but when she had not received the document in mid-June, she checked with the local police department about it.
Forty-eight hours later, Bowne was dead. A massive manhunt for her killer was launched, and he was found a few days later, having apparently committed suicide.
It was then that media scrutiny revealed how police in New Jersey routinely allow gun permit applications to gather dust for inordinate amounts of time. Still, nothing has really changed and anti-gun Democrats in the legislature only seem to push for tighter gun laws.
