New Jerseys under the gun after that Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment | Mulshine – NJ.com

If I may indulge in the sort of clich that our governor loves to employ, this looks like the calm before the storm.

Im talking about the storm of cases that will be filed over New Jerseys firearms laws in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courts Bruen decision.

The first winds from that storm came on June 30, when the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a ruling in Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs v. Bruck.

The clubs had argued that New Jerseys ban on large magazines violates the Second Amendment. The appellate court originally rejected that argument and ruled the ban constitutional.

But everything changed last month when the high court issued its ruling in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

By a 6-3 margin the court ruled unconstitutional New Yorks policy of issuing gun permits only to those who can prove a justifiable need.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas stated, The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees. We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.[

The ruling reads like an invitation for a whole lot of challenges, say Second-Amendment advocates.

This is a state where its a felony to own a slingshot, said Evan Nappen, a Monmouth County-based lawyer who has a reputation as New Jerseys fiercest defender of gun rights. You can also do hard time for possessing a BB gun, he said.

I envision that gun law after gun law is going to be challenged and will fall, Nappen told me. The standard put out by Thomas is an incredibly tough standard for states to meet.

Now that the high court has recognized the individual right to keep and bear arms, that right has the same standing as other rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, he said.

When laws are challenged under the First Amendment, about 75 percent of the challenges are upheld, Nappen said. I suspect it will be the same with the Second Amendment.

Attorney General Matt Platkin doesnt agree. In a recent opinion piece for USA Today, Platkin wrote:

The opinion in Bruen will encourage individuals to challenge other laws, ranging from our limits on who can buy guns, to our limits on the most dangerous kinds of guns New Jersey residents can buy. I will stand up for these critical safety measures, which find support in a long tradition of public safety measures in this country, and which continue to protect us in this era of gun violence and mass shootings.

What Platkin calls critical safety measures, Scott Bach calls hypertechnical offenses.

Bach, who is executive director of the New Jersey Association of Rifle and Pistol Clubs, said state law attaches long prison terms to offenses that people didnt even know were illegal.

That includes a mother of two from Philadelphia who faced a three-year term when she was stopped on the way to Atlantic City and made the mistake of telling the cop she was carrying a pistol. Shaneen Allen had a carry permit in her home state and was unaware it wasnt honored in New Jersey. Then there was Brian Aitken, who was sentenced to seven years after he was stopped by police with two registered and unloaded guns in his trunk.

Allen was admitted to pretrial intervention after the event got national publicity. Aitken had his sentence commuter by Gov. Chris Christie after he served four months.

But there are plenty of similar cases focusing on what Bach terms hardware offenses, the mere possession of an object.

When lawmakers focus on hardware they dont make anyone safer, Bach said. Instead we should create severe criminal penalties for the criminal use of any weapon, whether its a razor blade or a baseball bat.

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Nappen noted that the state recently increased sentences for possession of so-called ghost guns. But serial numbers were not required until 1968. There are millions of guns out there that lack serial numbers, he said, and most of the owners probably have no idea that possessing one can set them up with a three-year mandatory minimum sentence.

All these people are turned into what I call law-abiding criminals, Nappen said.

Thanks to the high court, its time to change those laws.

And as for me, Ill give up my slingshot when they pry my cold, dead hands off it.

More: Recent Paul Mulshine columns

Paul Mulshine may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.

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New Jerseys under the gun after that Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment | Mulshine - NJ.com