By Paul Lathrop | Contributing Editor
There is hope, even with a gloomy forecast under the newly-installed Biden administration, and gun owners will be able to move forward on Second Amendment rights, according to New Jersey’s Theresa Inacker.
Inacker is a widowed mother and attorney living in the Garden State. She is licensed to practice law in New Jersey and New York and in the Federal Courts, including the United States Supreme Court. She is also a Trustee with the Coalition of New Jersey Firearms Owners.
“There is always hope,” Inacker told TGM in a telephone interview. “If I can have hope in New Jersey, you can have hope.”
She stated that New Jersey is controlled by the Democratic party heavily in both houses of the legislature. “There are always fifty plus, maybe a hundred bills pending, and they’re always looking for ways to infringe our rights,” she said.
“In the fighting, you get reenergized if you are going to be a leader of any kind, even a leader of your own household, you have to have hope, that’s a leadership quality,” Inacker continued. “Why would anyone want to join your leadership effort, or follow you, or feel inspired if you yourself won’t have hope? Of course not.”
She said holding out hope is “a decision that you have to make.”
“Just as I think in forgiving another person,” she observed, “it’s not a feeling. So don’t conflate feelings and decisions. Hope is a decision. Forgiving someone can be a decision, but you might (still) feel hurt about something.”
Living “behind enemy lines” in one of the strictest states in the nation where gun rights are concerned, Inacker has developed a keen understanding of the importance of protecting a fundamental right.
“For me, I believe that the Second Amendment keeps the power in the hands of the People,” she explained. “I feel like we are at an advantage; it might not feel like it, but we are at an advantage. Once you lose a right, it’s very difficult to get it back. If they take a right from you, they will not give it back. You must understand that. We live that there in New Jersey, we were down to fifteen rounds (magazine capacity), then they took us down to ten rounds, and it will not stop”.
Inacker pointed to several current court cases that challenge the magazine capacity and carry restrictions in her state.
“To make a federal case, first of all, you need a money pit,” she noted. “You need someone with ‘standing,’ as it’s called, someone who fits the bill and has been infringed or aggrieved by the action or law. You need to find someone in the community who is willing to step up and say, ‘I applied for a carry permit, I went through the process, I paid all the money, I’ve met all of the other requirements. It’s taken me eight months to do this. I want to sue.’”
She explained that not many people apply for a permit in New Jersey because they know that they will be denied and do not want a denial on their record. That creates a shortage of people who have “standing” to file a lawsuit.
“It can take years literally to go through the process,” she said, speaking of filing a lawsuit and following it through to its conclusion. “In 2018, a case was filed in Federal Court over the 10 round magazine limit. Part of the problem was, the state NRA affiliate tried to get a judicial order to stay the application of the law because there were a lot of people spending a lot of money pinning their mags, a lot of money to purchase new ones. If you could just not apply the law and then go through the hearings, and we’ll go from there. The court denied it.”
The case has been going through the court system for nearly three years while residents still have to comply with the law. It has made it to the Supreme Court, where it is waiting to see if the Justices will hear it.
“The Supreme Court only takes about three percent of the cases that are requested of them,” she acknowledged. “You are talking 3 out of 100 cases that get to be heard before SCOTUS. This is no joke, we have to put up 100 cases, and 3 of them would be taken.”
“It takes years,” she repeated. “You can’t let them wear you down, you know ‘don’t let the bastards wear you down.’”
