New Jersey lawmakers last Monday took a step toward further toughening the state’s already strict gun laws.
A state Assembly committee approved a package of bills that, among other things, would tighten the state’s gun storage law, ban future sales of .50 caliber firearms in the state, and require gun dealers in the state to keep logs of ammunition sales and make them available to law enforcement.
The bills passed along party lines as those who support them praised them as commonsense measures while critics called them another infringement on Second Amendment rights.
The measures would:
- (A5030) Require people who buy guns in New jersey to renew their purchaser ID card every four years and show proof of taking a course on safe handling and storage of firearms. Currently, purchaser ID cards are valid indefinitely. It would also require people who inherit guns to get a purchaser ID card.
- (A1280) Ban the future sales of .50 caliber guns in the state and require current owners of them to register them and pay a $50 fee. Additionally, if someone who has a .50 caliber firearm they can not be passed down to heirs after they die. It would need to be sold or rendered inoperable.
- (A6218) Amend the state’s public nuisance laws to prohibit the gun industry from endangering the safety or health of the public through its sale, manufacturing, importing, or marketing of guns. Officials say 80% of guns used in crimes in New Jersey come from out of state.
- (A5647) Require gun owners in the state to store firearms in a lockbox or safe.
- (A5787) Mandate firearm manufacturers to, within a year, incorporate micro-stamping technology into new handguns sold in New Jersey to provide law enforcement with a tool to quickly link firearm cartridge casings found at the scene of a crime to a specific firearm, without having to recover the firearm itself.
- (A1292) Require ammunition manufacturers and dealers to keep a detailed electronic record of sales and report them to the State Police.
- (A3686) Require gun owners who move to New Jersey to obtain a firearm purchaser ID card and register their guns within 60 days.
- (AR277) Reconvene a “States for Gun Safety” summit in the state.
“We have among the lowest gun-crime realities of any American state. That’s what we’re committed to,” Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday when asked about the bills.
“We have no issue with law-abiding Second Amendment folks,” he added at his latest coronavirus briefing in Trenton. “That’s not our objective. And I think the packages we’ve already seen passed, as well as this prospective package, all continue to get at making our state responsibly, sensibly, and reasonably the strongest gun-safety state in America.”
But Scott Bach, the executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, disagreed.
“Not one of Governor Murphy’s schemes punishes gun crime — instead, every single one interferes with the Constitutional right of honest citizens to defend themselves in an emergency,” Bach said. “Whatever we don’t defeat in the legislature we will defeat in the courts.”
The bills first face another hurdle though: the state Senate.
It’s unclear if state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester — who was ousted from his seat last month in a shocking loss — will post them in his chamber. Speaking to reporters last week, Sweeney said he supports some of the bills, not all of them. But he promised to “look at them all.”
Sweeney also said he wanted more focus on guns used in crimes in New Jersey that make their way into the state illegally.
New Jersey’s gun laws are already among the strictest in the nation, second to only California, according to rankings by the Gifford Law Center.
Murphy made gun safety a focus of his first term. He and the Democratic-led Legislature have previously ushered two packages of gun-control bills into law, including measures that reduced magazine capacity to 10 bullets, banned armor-piercing bullets, made it tougher to obtain a permit to carry a handgun, expanded background checks on private gun sales, banned so-called ghost guns, and pushed the development and sales of “smart guns.”
Murphy has also promised to “name and shame” gunmakers whose weapons end up on the street, as well as states with weaker gun laws. State authorities began publishing monthly reports showing the source state for every “crime gun” recovered by police in New Jersey.
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