Posted on 03/18/2006 9:02:33 PM PST by ncountylee
TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, but shooting deaths in its major cities still surged last year.
Anti-gun activists point to weapons spilling into New Jersey from other states as a large part of the problem. On Saturday, they were adding their voices to an anti-war rally to draw attention to the danger of weapons at home. The rally will end with a march across the "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" bridge to Morrisville, Pa.
"We think that it's entirely appropriate that this rally and march will be across a bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, because it's across such bridges that guns come into our state that devastate our communities," said Bryan Miller, director of CeasefireNJ, which was joining members of Million Mom March at the rally.
According to prosecutors in Camden County, of the 252 guns used in crimes there in 2003-04 that could be traced to their original point of sale, 36 percent came from Pennsylvania, while only about 14 percent came from New Jersey.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that from 1992 to 1998, 80 percent of guns confiscated in crimes in New Jersey had been smuggled in from other states, according to figures cited by Republican Assemblyman Richard Merkt.
But Congress in recent years has restricted the amount of detail on gun tracing that the ATF may share with the public. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a Democrat and prosecutor in Trenton Municipal Court, is now pressing legislation that would require the state attorney general to begin compiling that data.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesleader.com ...
Hey gun grabbers...see any correlation?
LOL....I had this vision of guns walking across state lines......oh, pardon me....the guns have PEOPLE operating them????
The anti-gun people have it perfect. If they pass strict gun laws and gun crime falls, it's the gun laws working. If they pass strict gun laws and gun crime rises, it's another state with less strict gun laws fault.
Blaming other states seems to be the latest tactic of the anti-gun crowd: Mayor Menino in Boston was blaming New Hampshire, Mayor Bloomberg was blaming some other state.
I'd bet the libs are going for a Federal law to ban guns across the country. To heck with states' rights!
So the Dims in NJ are complaining of Insurgents now?
.....from my cold dead hands.
OK then - why do the states with less strict gun laws have LESS crime than New Jersey?
Surely the New Jersey politicians must have known or suspected that guns could be brought in from other states/countries when they passed the restrictive laws. Did they believe that the penalties for illegal possession and use would deter criminals without regard to other states' laws (which it apparently has not), did they believe that other states would automatically jump on New Jersey's bandwagon and pass similarly restrictive laws, or did they (more likely) waste the taxpayers time and money (and needlessly endanger law-abiding gun owners) by passing unworkable laws?
This is a co-ordinated effort, all these stories started coming out together around December or January or so. I also know that that certain Boston officials were TOLD to start spreading this story around to the press.
NJ Dems spent three years bashing assault rifles - spent gazillions and guess how many people do you think were ever killed by assault rifles in NJ?
Not one.
Vermont has very few gun laws by comparison, you can even carry concealed without a permit, yet it has one of the lowest murder rates. People aren't importing guns to commit crimes in VT, they are also not committing many with their own guns.
Maybe NJ has a problem with certain of their citizens.
The author of the article would probably answer that gun dealers in the low crime/less restrictive states sold all their guns to New Jersey criminals, leaving none for local criminals.
Doing shootings that New Jersey guns won't do?
Well, what kind of statistics do you expect to see? This makes perfect sense.
Handguns can't even be sold in the District of Columbia; therefore, probably zero percent of guns used in crimes have original points of sale in D.C. But wait, there are shootings in D.C. nearly every day.
This premise of this article is silly.
Another factor is that New Jersey, while densely populated, is much smaller and more urban than a number of surrounding states. It should come as no surprise that guns (along with a variety of other items both legal and illegal) are imported into the state by others.
That annoying character Bryan Miller is simply a professional rabblerouser. Does he even have a day job or does he just do gungrabbing as his fulltime gig?
~ Blue Jays ~
Obviously, what New Jersey needs to do is set up checkpoints at all the bridges so that they can search all cars for contraband guns while they look over your papers.
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