New Jersey, home to one of the nation’s toughest gun-control laws, just became even more hostile to the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners. On Wednesday, New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed a total of six gun-control bills into law.
The legislations are:
• A-1181 — Requires the seizure of firearms belonging to people that mental health professionals have determined pose a “threat” to either themselves or others.
• A-1217 — Officially, the “Extreme Risk Protective Order Act of 2018,” allows for a temporary court order prohibiting a person that the courts determine to be a “threat” or significant danger to either themselves or others from possessing or purchasing a firearm.
• A-2757 — Requires background checks for all private purchases of firearms.
• A-2758 — Codifies regulations defining “justifiable need” in order to obtain a legal handgun carry permit.
• A-2759 — Prohibits individuals from possessing ammunition capable of penetrating body armor.
• A-2761 — Lowers the maximum capacity of magazine ammunition from 15 to 10 rounds for all firearms, except for firearms with .22-caliber magazines.
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Regarding the first two measures (A-1181 and A-1217), what is to guarantee or protect the rights of the minority, namely law-abiding gun owners, from having their firearms wrongfully confiscated? Can a partisan, one-party-controlled government really be entrusted to make non-partisan, or non-politically influenced decisions of who is deemed a “threat” or “danger”?
In the Soviet Union and in eastern-bloc communist satellites, state-controlled doctors and courts were regularly used to diagnose political opposition and Christians as being “mentally ill” or a “threat” to the “people,” as “represented by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
Individuals who harbored anti-government sentiments, expressed criticism about the Communist Party, or who believed in God, the Bible, or Christianity were given psychiatric evaluations by the state and even forcibly sent to psychiatric wards and mental asylums where they were subjected to unspeakable abuses, medical experimentation, and other heinous acts.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider that Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s The View, described Vice President Mike Pence’s evangelical Christian belief that Jesus speaks to him as “mental illness.” Could the beliefs of Christians be used against them in order diagnose them as suffering from “mental illness” or posing a threat?
Christians in New Jersey may have to watch more carefully what they say or post on social media.
What about people who belong to conservative organizations, such as this publication’s parent organization, The John Birch Society? The radical leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, which was regularly cited as a legitimate source by the Obama-era Department of Homeland Security, lists The John Birch Society, Eagle Forum, Constitution Party, Oath Keepers, Tenth Amendment Center, and other likeminded conservative organization as “extreme antigovernment groups.”
Yet, radical Marxist-Leninist organizations — such as the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RevCom), Workers World Party, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — that openly call for the violent overthrow of capitalism and the U.S. government, as well as the disarmament and abolition of local police departments — are nowhere to be found on the SPLC’s list of “extreme antigovernment groups” or “hate groups.”
Considering the partisan Democratic Party-controlled state of both the New Jersey legislature and the executive branch, it would not be farfetched to find the SPLC providing its hypocritical and lopsided so-called “intelligence” as a basis for law-enforcement investigation, as it did during the Obama administration.
Furthermore, the imposition of background checks for all private sales of firearms makes it harder for law-abiding private gun owners to sell their firearms to other law-abiding citizens.
The codification of regulations defining a “justifiable need” in order to obtain a carry permit, further reduces the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
These curtailments and abridgments of one’s rights essentially boil down to nothing less than a total assault on the Second Amendment. They may also be a glimpse of the type of far-reaching gun-control measures Democrats would like to impose nationwide if and when they regain overwhelming majority controls of both branches of Congress and eventually the presidency.
In response to New Jersey’s new egregious anti-Second Amendment laws, the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), which is New Jersey’s oldest and largest pro-Second Amendment organization and an affiliate of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has filed suit in federal court to overturn the new laws.
ANJRPC Executive Director Scott Bach told PR Newswire, “This unconstitutional law will be ignored by criminals and madmen, and affects only law-abiding citizens,” adding, “It turns one million people into criminals with the stroke of a pen, limits self-defense, and takes away property lawfully acquired.”
Bach summarized the new laws and ANJRPC’s suit: “Buy it yesterday, ban it today, go to prison tomorrow — it’s the Jersey way, and the goal of our lawsuit is to boot this law, which makes no one safer, into the trash heap of history where it belongs.”
Photo of Phil Murphy at signing: Screenshot of Governor Murphy’s Facebook page
