New Jersey's Gun Laws Strike Again!

History sure is quick to bite Chris Christie’s sizable butt on his Second Amendment shift.

When running for Governor in 2009, a Democratic attack ad showed Chris Christie’s face beside a row of bullets, calling him ‘a staunch ally of the NRA’. The ad’s ominous warning was that unlike Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey’s Democratic governor at the time, Christie “stands with the NRA and opposes banning armor-piercing rifles.”

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Christie brushed away the criticism and his campaign swiftly sent out a news release saying that Chris Christie “supports the assault weapons ban and all current gun laws” and declared he would “toughen gun laws to fight criminals and make New Jersey safer” if elected Governor.

Unfortunately, the stories out of the Garden State under Governor Christie show his gun laws have done more to fight the upstanding citizens of the state.

From Carol Bowne to Steffon Josey-Davis, Shaneen Allen to Carlo Bellario, the long list of victims who have paid and continue to pay the price seems to display every gun owner’s worst nightmare “behind enemy lines”in the Garden State.

Currently, the gun laws are so draconian and confusing in New Jersey that they actually deny some ex-cops the right to carry. State statute 2C:39-6 currently lists individuals eligible for right-to-carry as ‘federal, state, county or municipal officers, sheriff’s officers, corrections officers, park police and county prosecutor investigators’ and includes any former “full-time member of a state law enforcement agency.”

55-year-old John Kotchkowski retired in 2011 as a highly decorated police sergeant with the University of Medicine and Dentistry. Yet even Kotchkowski found himself denied the right to carry. What possible reason for denial could the state have given, you ask?

Because he was a “campus cop.”

“It’s made me feel like my whole career was a sham, like they’re saying I wasn’t a real cop,” Kotchkowski told The Star-Ledger.

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Attorney Thomas Roughneen represents Kotchkowski as well as 48 other retired officers fighting for their right to carry.

“How are UMDNJ police not a state law enforcement agency?” Roughneen said. “By that logic, that makes the entire Rutgers police force – which is one of the largest in the state – ineligible. And that flies in the face of the intent of the law, which is to increase public safety.”

Think Governor Christie’s campaign promises sync up with his actions back home? Think again.

The Christie administration’s official line as recently as 2014 was that the governor “supports New Jersey’s already tough gun laws,” and in spite of pardoning several citizens unjustly convicted under the current laws, it says more that he waited until the eve of his presidential campaign kick off to announce sweeping changes to New Jersey’s unpardonable gun laws.

He’s only slightly more a friend to the Second Amendment than the New Jersey Legislature.

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