From NJ.com:
A New Jersey Court recently pronounced: “There is no rational relationship between restricting the number of guns that a licensed gun dealer and a licensed gun owner can transact per month and the frequency of illegal gun possession and crime.”
In so holding, the Court voided a local ordinance that rationed firearms specifically to law abiding citizens pre-certified by the State as having no criminal or mental health record after passing a 13-point background investigation.
Trying to reduce gun crime by rationing firearms to law abiding citizens is a little like trying to reduce stabbings by rationing steak knives to restaurant goers, which is why the Court found the ordinance to be irrational. The criminal misuse of any lawful product is not a function of the number of units sold to honest citizens; it’s a function of how effectively society deals with those who misuse them.
Gun rationing was passed several years ago in South Carolina but was subsequently repealed when BATFE statistics showed that illegal trafficking was not impacted. Gun rationing was similarly shown to be ineffective in Virginia, where it had the effect of disarming victims rather than the criminals it purported to restrict. It is as unsound in theory as it has been in practice in the few states that have been bamboozled into passing it.
New Jersey’s version of gun rationing, A339, is particularly offensive to honest gun owners, who already submit to months of invasive government scrutiny before being certified by the State as “acceptable” to own firearms. A339 goes even further, essentially telling them that they are the ones responsible for gun crime, and that the solution, rather than aggressive prosecution of criminals, is to further restrict their rights. Only in New Jersey.
