An Assembly Committee is meeting Monday, March 14 to do what New Jersey politicians do best, pass more gun laws. The world might be turned upside down with record high gas prices, inflation and war, but topping the agenda for Trenton Democrats is yet another gun law. The Garden State has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but the thirst for more will never be quenched. Please contact your Assembly Member and ask them to OPPOSE A.2426!
Next week, the Assembly Law & Public Safety Committee has on its agenda A.2426, also known as the “gulag bill.” It is an extraordinarily dangerous piece of legislation, and it doesn’t have to be. Law-abiding gun owners have always said, “enforce the laws on the books and punish criminals, not innocents.” A.2426, by Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly, is a trap. It makes denial of bail an automatic “rebuttable presumption” when a gun is involved. In other words, Assembly Democrats are now saying if a gun was involved, you shouldn’t even get bail. However, the bill doesn’t say a gun was possessed AND a crime was committed. It says “or.”
These are possessory offenses, and New Jersey has an entire patchwork of complicated laws where honest mistakes have dire consequences, and most of them are simple possession offenses with no criminal intent. We can produce a long list of people who have become ensnared and suffered those consequences, except this time, there is no bail while it gets sorted out. For example, under this bill, if you are going hunting or to the range and forget your FID card, you have committed a crime. Widows turning in their deceased spouse’s firearms without an FID will now rot in jail.
That’s right. Somebody who runs afoul of this would sit in jail for months, if not years, awaiting trial. So, while criminal justice “reformers” around the country are turning violent criminals loose, your New Jersey elected officials are setting traps for law-abiding gun owners. Is this the intent?
We have been down this road before. If this is not intentional, and it was simply drafting mistake, there is an easy, one-sentence fix. Change the word “or” to “and” and insert the word “violent” before “crime.” Problem solved. Either this is intentional or easily fixed. Contact your Assembly member and find out.
Please contact your Assembly member today and respectfully ask that they oppose A.2426.
