At the 25th District candidate forum in Morristown last night, NRA-sponsored candidates Anthony Bucco and Brian Bergen finally unveiled their plans to tackle gun violence in New Jersey: legalizing slingshots.

“We have gone so far in this state that your son or daughter can’t have a slingshot. That’s how absurd our laws have gotten,” said Bergen. “They can’t have a BB-gun, they can’t have a slingshot.”

Faced with several questions about gun violence, Brian lamented that common-sense gun safety measures like universal background checks, passed despite objections from his running mate Anthony Bucco, went too far: “It’s not for the actual protection of people or to solve any real problems or to prevent crime or make our schools safer. We’re doing it for soundbites and national rhetoric and to get votes and it’s not right.”

“To conflate weapons of war that kill thousands of people across the country every year to slingshots is disgusting,” said Bhimani and Draeger Campaign Manager, Daniel Fleiss. “This isn’t about soundbites and it’s certainly not about scoring cheap political points. It’s about life-or-death policy that Anthony Bucco has voted against at every opportunity: universal background checks, bans on high-capacity magazines and gun-free zones at schools.”

“Brian should look in the eyes of the five-to-ten-year-old students at Tamaques Elementary School in Westfield, where a man was arrested in June with a loaded gun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and tell them that the real gun safety problem in New Jersey is about slingshots. Our children’s lives are on the line every day and if the best Brian and Anthony can do is kowtow to their donors at the NRA and whine about what’s in their toy box, they have no place representing us in the State Assembly.”

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