New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed the door in the face of his state’s anti-gun Democrats yesterday, vetoing a bill that would have reduced the magazine size limit in the state from 15 rounds to ten.  Christie was characteristically blunt in his rejection of the legislation.

Gov. Chris Christie today vetoed a gun control bill that would have reduced the permitted size of ammunition magazines, saying it would do nothing to reduce gun violence.

“This is the very embodiment of reform in name only. It simply defies common sense to believe that imposing a new and entirely arbitrary number of bullets that can be lawfully loaded into a firearm will somehow eradicate, or even reduce, future instances of mass violence,” Christie said. “Nor is it sufficient to claim that a ten-round capacity might spare an eleventh victim.”

The move came less than an hour after gun control advocates — including parents of two children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — dropped off at Christie’s office 55,000 signatures of people from around the country, including 10,000 from New Jersey, urging him to sign the measure.

Christie conditionally vetoed the legislation (A2006), but he did more than propose changes. He completely rewrote it, eliminating the ammunition capacity reduction and suggesting in its place several changes to the state’s mental health system that he first proposed more than a year ago.

“I will not support such a trivial approach to the sanctity of human life, because this is not governing. Governing is confronting problems,” Christie said in his veto message.

Christie is on the right path here.

Reducing the magazine capacity from 10-15 rounds will only affect those souls who are defensively minded, firearms with owning only a few magazines for defensive or target shooting purposes. Anyone intent on an rampage—the presumed targets of the legislation—will simply cross state lines to purchase standard-capacity magazines, will opt to carry multiple magazines, and will likely have a secondary or even a tertiary firearm in reserve, as most spree killers and mass killers have done. He instead suggested that mental health reform targeting the dangerously mentally ill and those in rapidly declining mental health would be more effective measures, which is more than likely true.

The reality is, of course, that New Jersey’s cynical anti-gun Democrats never expected this legislation to pass, and it was never seriously offered as viable crime reduction legislation.

The point of the legislation offer by the left-wing citizen control cult was to put Christie on record as vetoing gun control legislation. This was specifically done so that they can claim that “he voted against ‘common sense’ gun control legislation” if he seeks out the 2016 Republican Presidential  nomination as so many pundits on both sides are predicting.

The proposed legislation was never about stopping criminal violence, or reducing deaths.

It was always and only about political gamesmanship by a cynical and bitter Democrat Party playing the political long game at the expense of the people of New Jersey.