Community Corner
NJ gun bills would create new criminals: Letter
Legislative bills calling for limits on gun magazines are unlikely to reduce gun deaths in New Jersey. Mere possession of a 15-round magazine for sporting purposes or home defense should not be a crime. We should concentrate our efforts on those individuals who use any capacity magazine to murder people.
To examine the correlation between gun deaths and magazine capacity higher than 10 rounds, we can ignore accidents and suicides. In both cases, it is unlikely the individuals involved would fire more than one round. If we also eliminate justified shootings by police and those defending their lives and families, we are left primarily with a pool of criminal shooters. If someone is willing to murder another human, he is unlikely to be deterred by a 15-round ban.
If these bills become law, New Jersey will create an entirely new class of criminals of formerly law-abiding individuals. Those of us who have scrupulously obeyed the voluminous restrictions contained in New Jersey firearms statutes will suddenly be in possession of items that were completely legal to possess before the additional restrictions. The signing of these bills into law will merely make us less able to defend our homes and families. I am absolutely certain that concentrating on the reduction of poverty, drugs and crime in our cities would result in the reduction of far more murders than imposing further restrictions on law-abiding individuals.
Frank Jack Fiamingo, president,
New Jersey Second Amendment Society