For his troubles, Bergen County Democrat Assemblyman Gordon Johnson called Christie’s conditional vetoes “shameful.” According to NJ101.5 News, Johnson accused Christie of having “once again put his political ambitions above the public safety of New Jersey residents.”
But instead of sulking off to some dark corner to cry alligator tears, the one-time presidential hopeful encouraged the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature to make New Jersey a “shall-issue” state for concealed carry permits.
Currently in New Jersey, the report said, the state requires applicants to demonstrate an “urgent necessity for self-protection, as evidenced by specific threats, or previous attacks.”
Perhaps those lawmakers have forgotten Carol Bowne, the Berlin Township woman whose gun permit application gathered dust on the police chief’s desk for weeks before she was murdered last year in her own driveway. A man against whom Bowne had a restraining order stabbed her repeatedly. He was later found dead in an apparent suicide.
That happened 48 hours after she had gone to the police department to inquire about the permit holdup. The story caused an uproar, but no change in the law.
After vetoing measures that would have made the gun laws tougher, Christie had this to say, according to the NJ1015 report:
“I continue to oppose the relentless campaign by the Democratic legislature to make New Jersey as inhospitable as possible to lawful gun ownership and sales. Instead of remaining an outlier with overly burdensome restrictions of questionable constitutionality, New Jersey should follow the lead of the vast majority of states across the country and simplify, not complicate, the ability of responsible citizens, dealers and retailers, to buy, sell and possess firearms as protected by the Second Amendment.”
Such rhetoric drives gun prohibitionists to a frenzy, but the story quoted Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, who had a much different reaction.
“Not only has he rejected their medieval schemes to block self-defense,” Bach said in a statement, “but he has fired back in a way that forces them to choose squarely between citizen empowerment or victimization in the post-Orlando era of terror attacks on U.S. soil. The inescapable truth is that government cannot protect you when evil strikes — the only solution is citizen empowerment, and it is the legal, moral and Constitutional imperative of government to facilitate and not block self-defense.”
