Christie’s Belated Backtrack on Guns | National Review Online
The New Jersey governor just vetoed gun bills he had supported — conservatives shouldn’t buy it.
Those searching for tangible signs that
Chris Christie is preparing himself for something bigger than
Drumthwacket need look no further than to the comical events of last
Friday, on which day Christie vetoed his own gun-control bill. Why else
would a man who has one of the worst Second Amendment records in the
country choose to go against New Jersey’s political grain in order to
kill a measure that he himself had argued for?
Christie used his conditional veto to water down to the vanishing point two proposals that had passed the state’s legislature by comfortable margins. The first of these would have linked gun purchases with legal records on a digital “smart card” available to a number of state agencies, required all New Jerseyans to undergo training before they could own a firearm, and banned all private sales of firearms. Effectively gutting the bill, Christie argued that the requisite technology for smart cards did not exist and that the training and sales provisions were too draconian. A second bill would have banned all future sales of .50-caliber rifles and confiscated those already owned in the state. This one Christie vetoed outright.
The governor’s explanation for this second veto was as disastrous as it was transparent. As ThinkProgress noted with typical irritation, Christie “claims he vetoed the bill because it went further than he would have preferred.” Given that the bill would not just have prohibited the further sale of .50-caliber rifles but would have confiscated those already purchased, this certainly seems reasonable enough. Yet it wasn’t the primary reason that Christie gave. Instead, he grumbled that “the bill passed by the legislature seeks to ban a firearm that has reportedly never been used in a crime in New Jersey.” “The wide scope of this total ban,” Christie concluded, “will not further public safety, but only interfere with lawful recreational pastimes.”
All of this is perfectly true. Because they are almost impossible to carry, cost upwards of $12,000, and require ammunition that works out to about $5 per round, the Barrett .50-caliber rifle is hardly the weapon du choix of the average liquor-store crook. Then again, this was also perfectly true back in April when Christie explicitly called for the prohibition of such weapons. As such, one has to ask: If the governor is honestly aware that these firearms have “reportedly never been used in a crime in New Jersey,” why did he support banning their purchase? I can think of few more callous positions to take than to agree that something isn’t harmful at all and then to ban it anyway. Indeed, Christie appears to agree with me: “We must focus on what actually works to reduce violence,” his office told MSNBC, “and not just what is politically popular or sounds good in name only.”
-go to link-
Christie used his conditional veto to water down to the vanishing point two proposals that had passed the state’s legislature by comfortable margins. The first of these would have linked gun purchases with legal records on a digital “smart card” available to a number of state agencies, required all New Jerseyans to undergo training before they could own a firearm, and banned all private sales of firearms. Effectively gutting the bill, Christie argued that the requisite technology for smart cards did not exist and that the training and sales provisions were too draconian. A second bill would have banned all future sales of .50-caliber rifles and confiscated those already owned in the state. This one Christie vetoed outright.
The governor’s explanation for this second veto was as disastrous as it was transparent. As ThinkProgress noted with typical irritation, Christie “claims he vetoed the bill because it went further than he would have preferred.” Given that the bill would not just have prohibited the further sale of .50-caliber rifles but would have confiscated those already purchased, this certainly seems reasonable enough. Yet it wasn’t the primary reason that Christie gave. Instead, he grumbled that “the bill passed by the legislature seeks to ban a firearm that has reportedly never been used in a crime in New Jersey.” “The wide scope of this total ban,” Christie concluded, “will not further public safety, but only interfere with lawful recreational pastimes.”
All of this is perfectly true. Because they are almost impossible to carry, cost upwards of $12,000, and require ammunition that works out to about $5 per round, the Barrett .50-caliber rifle is hardly the weapon du choix of the average liquor-store crook. Then again, this was also perfectly true back in April when Christie explicitly called for the prohibition of such weapons. As such, one has to ask: If the governor is honestly aware that these firearms have “reportedly never been used in a crime in New Jersey,” why did he support banning their purchase? I can think of few more callous positions to take than to agree that something isn’t harmful at all and then to ban it anyway. Indeed, Christie appears to agree with me: “We must focus on what actually works to reduce violence,” his office told MSNBC, “and not just what is politically popular or sounds good in name only.”
-go to link-
No comments:
Post a Comment