Governor Phil Murphy visits the Islamic Center of Old Bridge on Friday, December 16, 2022. Photo courtesy of Phil Murphy’s office. License.
New Jersey already has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, but that’s not enough for Governor Phil Murphy. He wants to harass gun owners with layers of regulations that will make exercising their rights nearly unbearable. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board writes:
Politicians these days don’t have the respect they once did for the Bill of Rights, and some are defying courts that enforce those rights. That’s the story in New Jersey, where last week Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law that makes getting a gun carry permit more difficult and expensive and sharply limits the public places where a firearm can be carried.
Gov. Murphy concedes he’s bound by Bruen though he disagrees with it. But the new law is transparently an exercise in bad faith to complicate the right to bear arms. The law introduces new hassles to gun rights, such as raising the cost of carry permits and requiring liability insurance. But the most egregious provision bans guns in numerous “sensitive places.”
Prohibited areas include courthouses, airports, places where alcohol is served, schools, nursing homes, amusement parks, casinos, public parks, public libraries and museums, and much more. It’s similar to a recent New York law that bans guns in parks, Times Square and subways. Criminals—who don’t obey gun laws—would know they have nothing to fear from someone trying to defend himself in these gun-free zones.
The Court in Bruen acknowledged the historical reality that guns were sometimes banned in specific locations. But the Justices also said that “expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of ‘sensitive places’ far too broadly.”
Gov. Murphy knows this. He nonetheless wants to force gun owners to have to sue to vindicate their rights, which is expensive and can take years. While serving in the Clinton Administration in 2000, Andrew Cuomo called this strategy “death by a thousand cuts” as a warning to gun makers to settle a lawsuit brought by 28 cities and counties. Gov. Murphy’s legal defiance to eviscerate an enumerated constitutional right is no more attractive.
Action Line: The two states with America’s lowest homicide rates, New Hampshire and Vermont, have almost no restrictions at the state level on concealed carry. Why do states like New Jersey and New York believe that the answer to their crime problems lies in restricting the rights of their citizens? Click here to subscribe to my free monthly letter, Survive & Thrive.
Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.
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