Steinhardt: NJGOP Stands Up for Legal Gun Owners
NJGOP Stands Up for Legal Gun Owners
For Immediate Release
Trenton, NJ – Yesterday, the Assembly Judiciary Committee voted on a set of new bills that would add new restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms in New Jersey. NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt, standing up for legal gun owners, released the following statement:
“It’s time that New Jersey Republicans stop worrying about who they might offend and start standing up for what they believe in. That includes protecting the rights of New Jersey’s legal gun owners.
Democrats are waging an all-out war on gun ownership and ignoring the scourge of gun violence. While they demand broader restrictions on legal owners, they turn their blind eye toward common sense policing that would identify and punish violent offenders. Democrats have even gone so far as to try to give violent criminals political power by making them voters.
These same Democrats continue to play to an activist minority by championing empty, anti-gun legislation that does nothing meaningful to end or even address gun violence in New Jersey. It is an irresponsible act of the resume-padding, feel-good fashion to pander to an elite donor class, while criminals who want guns get them, and tone deaf Democrats let them.
President John F. Kennedy challenged the political class of his day to reach beyond the easy and do what was hard. That’s still good advice today.
We must stop vilifying legal gun owners, which is the easy way to make a gun statement, and get tough on gun violence, which is harder and takes guts. To start, stop allowing plea bargains in all cases of violent crime. Punish real criminals instead of creating new ones.
Tell the Attorney General and County Prosecutors that we want people who commit a crime using a gun to be treated with the same seriousness that legislators and law enforcement advocate treating people who legally own own one. Let’s send a message to America that New Jersey believes that every freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights matters; we don’t pick and choose some to celebrate and some to undermine. Ultimately, let’s treat gun violence for the crime it is and stop treating legal gun owners like the criminals they aren’t.”
