Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday urged state lawmakers to pass a new round of gun-control laws in New Jersey over the next few weeks, having secured support for the plans from one of the state’s top lawmakers.
Gathered outside Metuchen Borough Hall with parents and student activists, state Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, joined Murphy to promote the bills, which would mandate a safety course for gun owners, ban .50 caliber guns, and create standards for active shooter drills in schools and take other actions.
This is the third package of gun-control measures Murphy has pushed since taking office in 2018 and one of the first major initiatives he is undertaking after winning re-election last month in a closer-than-expected race.
“We have re-established ourselves as the quintessential gun safety state,” Murphy said at the event.
But he acknowledged that in the wake of another school shooting, this time at Oxford High School in Michigan where four students were killed by a 15-year-old classmate with his father’s gun on Tuesday, the work of enacting “common sense” gun safety laws is not finished.
“We gather today as families halfway across the country in Michigan are grappling with the grief and horror that their children are no longer with them,” the governor said. “Those children should all be alive today. Their peers should not be dealing with the after effects of their school’s hallways being in the gunman’s crosshairs.”
Murphy said passing the package of bills, introduced in April, tops his “to-do list” during the lame-duck legislative voting session — the period between last month’s elections and when the new state Legislature is sworn in Jan. 11. Whatever bills do not pass during the session must be reintroduced.
Coughlin pledged he will post the bills for a vote in the Democratic-controlled Assembly before the session ends.
“This is as much for you as anybody else,” the speaker told the students who attended the press conference.
“We’re proud in New Jersey and we ought to be, that we have the most tough, common-sense gun safety laws,” Coughlin added. But still, 445 people die each year in New Jersey on average from gun violence and 1,398 have been wounded.,”
New Jersey gun deaths are low compared to the rest of the nation, he said, “but by our standard, we have failed those people.”
The Democratic-controlled state Senate would also need to pass the measures before Murphy could sign them into law. It’s unclear if state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester — who was ousted from his seat last month in a shocking loss — will post them in his chamber.
Though Democrats retained their grip on both the Senate and Assembly in last month’s elections, Republicans flipped seven seats. And while lame duck is the last chance Democrats will have to pass legislation before they enter the new session with a smaller majority, Democrats may now be leery of tackling progressive policy because all 120 seats in the Legislature are up for grabs again in two years.
Motivational decorated stones as Governor Phil Murphy makes a gun safety announcement at Metuchen Borough Hall, in Metuchen, N.J. December, 2, 2021 Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Senate Republicans Steve Oroho, R-Sussex and Mike Testa, R-Cape May, responded to the announcement by issuing a statement that accused the governor of “disregarding the constitutional rights of legal gun owners.”
Oroho called the effort “a direct attack on responsible, registered firearms owners, sportsmen, and their constitutional rights.”
Testa said the rush to pass the bills was intended to stifle public comment.
“There are dozens of bills awaiting action in both houses of the Legislature that would do more to fight crime and make New Jersey communities safer for everyone,” Testa said. “This isn’t about public safety. It’s about his ultimate goal of taking guns away from the very residents who follow our laws.”
The measures would:
- Modernize firearm ID cards and require people to complete a firearm safety course to obtain a permit to buy a gun or receive a firearm ID card in New jersey (S2169).
- Require gun owners in the state to store firearms in a lockbox or safe.
- Ban weapons of .50 caliber or greater in the state (S103).
- Require gun owners who move to New Jersey to obtain a firearm purchaser ID card and register their guns within 30 days (A3686).
- Require ammunition manufacturers and dealers to keep a detailed electronic record of sales and report them to the State Police (A1292).
- Mandate firearm manufacturers to, within a year, incorporate micro-stamping technology into new handguns sold in New Jersey to provide law enforcement with a tool to quickly link firearm cartridge casings found at the scene of a crime to a specific firearm, without having to recover the firearm itself.
- Authorize the state Department of Education to establish standards for mandated school shooting drills.
- Amend the state’s public nuisance laws to prohibit the gun industry from endangering the safety or health of the public through its sale, manufacturing, importing, or marketing of guns. Officials say 80% of guns used in crimes in New Jersey come from out of state.
Jenifer Berrier Gonzalez, a volunteer with the New Jersey chapter of Moms Demand Action, stressed the importance of that bill mandating that guns are locked up, noting 80% of that minors who take their own lives with a gun or committed a shooting on school ground used a weapon belonging to family or friends.
“That’s why I support strengthening our firearms storage laws and educating the public about the importance of storing firearms and ammunition securely,” Berrier Gonzalez said.
Alex “Alejandro” Roubian, president of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, predicted if the bills become law, they will disproportionately punitive for minority gun owners.
“Over 90% over people prosecuted by the gun-laws he supports — and now wants to expand — are people of color, and now he continues to make New Jersey’s racist gun laws worse,” Roubian said. “All the measures Gov. Murphy advocated for today are specifically designed to make it more expensive and difficult for the low-income community and minorities to own a gun for self-defense.”
New Jersey’s gun laws are already among the strictest in the nation, second to only California, according to rankings by the Gifford Law Center.
Murphy made gun safety a focus of first term. He and the Democratic-led Legislature have previously ushered two packages of gun-control bills into law, including measures that reduced magazine capacity to 10 bullets, banned armor-piercing bullets, made it tougher to obtain a permit to carry a handgun, expanded background checks on private gun sales, banned so-called ghost guns, and pushed the development and sales of “smart guns.”
Murphy has also promised to “name and shame” gunmakers whose weapons end up on the street, as well as states with weaker gun laws. State authorities began publishing monthly reports showing the source state for every “crime gun” recovered by police in New Jersey.
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Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.
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