Post McDonald
As it turns out, New Jersey gun law offers fertile ground for challenge, not merely because the state has such strict laws but because New Jersey law is exceedingly aggressive toward the law-abiding gun owner.
New Jersey’s regulatory scheme is highly unusual in that it approaches gun control by categorically banning guns and then carving out extremely limited exceptions to the prohibitions.
Honestly, I thought Jersey would have been one of the first targets for the pro-gun side.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:40 am
My sense of events is that NJ is being held in reserve for the coup’ de grace.
They’ll soften up some of the other pillars of the gun controllers premise, and once those have started to crumble, NJ will be taken out back of the barn and horsewhipped.
Once NJ has gone down, it’s all over for the gun controllers.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:17 am
Even more so that Kali’s, New Jersey’s gun laws were written by the entertainment industry. In 1966, when the first mutters of “new studios” were linked to “gun control” the Garden State reported just 240 homicides.
By 1968, the official homicide total for the first year of gun controls was 358, 50% higher.
In 1970, the official total was 412 – exactly the same as the aggregate number of homicides the press had reported before Halloween.
A situation that has continued to this day. A few years ago, a New Jersey State Police rep explained it takes “60 days to process a homicide and put it on the list.”
Asked if murders that occurred in November and December went into the next years homicide total the representative was shocked.
“Oh, we couldn’t do that,” she reportedly gasped.
Stranger
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:28 pm
NJ is #2 in so many different categories for this, though. I’m pretty sure NY State is worse (NYC certainly is) in regards licenses to possess (which are at least nominally shall-issue, incidents like the recent one about the guy who was denied for slamming doors too hard notwithstanding), etc.
There’s no tactical advantage to gain by suing in the 3rd circuit over another one, AFAICT.
August 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 pm
The problem with New Jersey’s gun laws is that taken singly, none of them are really much of a slam dunk. If I were going to challenge NJ law, I’d challenge them on carry. Based on the previous ruling in regards to serial numbers, it would seem the Third Circuit may be willing to take Heller and McDonald seriously.
August 2nd, 2010 at 7:02 pm
I tend to think that Heller and McDonald were a, uhm, very nice thing. We are Americans, we CAN own one of these, or more. It’s not a person, it’s a piece of equipment. Like a knife, or shovel. The thing is, if I, or YOU, misuse said object, our demise is at hand. Why? It is against the law. If a Moro shows up at my door in the morning, should I kill it, or tell him where the coffee is.
August 3rd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
What Sebastian said 🙂
More seriously, while you could make a slam-dunk case on the PTB in NJ not following their own freaking law in regards to timely issue of paperwork (only in NJ does 30 days not mean 30 days), what does that get us?
That having been said, I suspect the problem is more finding an exemplary plaintiff. No-one applies because it is well-known that CCW permits are unavailable, and a denial affects your ability to get an out-of-state permit.
The permits to purchase and FID cards are nominally, and generally practically, shall-issue (after a wait – see the 30 days problem) so potential plaintiffs for a ownership permit aren’t denied, yet. If Heller 2 and/or one of the sons of McDonald go through and lay out what it means to infringe, then we have some basis. The AWB and Hollow-point restrictions are in fact unconstitutional, but there are “better” AWB to challenge, NJ’s AWB being a funky loner since the law is a list of 50-odd weapons and “substantially similar” with the NJ AG office morphing that into a more standard “feature list”, and NJ doesn’t (quite) ban hollow-point ammo, but subjects it to the same possession restrictions as a handgun (with the exception that there exists no permit to possess hollow-point ammo generally). Getting standing to fight *that* probably requires being arrested for a felony…
To be honest, I’d rather the shall-issue decision come someplace else, giving the NJ legislature less time to react to the problem. NJ has virtually no restrictions on carry if you have a permit (ground of educational institutions is the only one I could find). If it comes out of a different court that the only reason to deny a CCW permit is for being a prohibited person, then NJ becomes one of the least restrictive states to tote in with a permit. (To keep this, of course, we need ot punish the supporters of OGAM, which looks like it might happen next year).