Legislators want to add ammunition and gun accessories and components to a gun ban already in place for people convicted of domestic violence. (Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor)
Legislators will consider eight bills Thursday intended to tighten New Jersey’s firearm restrictions, even though their last batch of gun laws remains in limbo after gun-rights groups challenged them in court.
The Assembly’s judiciary committee will hear testimony on bills, introduced last year by various Democrats, that would establish new crimes for the reckless discharge of a firearm, the possession of digital instructions to 3D-print guns and gun parts, and the possession or sale of a machine gun conversion device, which enables a semiautomatic firearm to shoot multiple shots with one trigger pull.
A fourth bill would add ammunition and gun accessories and components to a gun ban already in place for people convicted of domestic violence and expand the ban to people under a domestic violence restraining order.
Other bills would require the state attorney general to publicly report shootings that do not injure anyone; mandate police training on how to identify machine gun conversion devices; give judges more time in deciding whether to detain someone before their trial for crimes involving guns; and require state police to alert local officers if people prohibited from buying guns and ammunition try to do so.
The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs urged members to lobby their legislators to oppose four bills they called “misguided,” blasting Thursday’s hearing as an attempt by Democrats to distract the public from the “national scandal over widespread tax fraud and abuse.”
“According to NJ lawmakers, the Second Amendment is really the problem and imminent action is needed to keep everyone safe. But in 2025, that tactic no longer works — and it is a miscalculation that could cost NJ Democrats dearly come election day,” the group said Tuesday.
All Assembly seats, as well as the governor’s seat, are on the ballot this November.
The group warns the reckless discharge bill will “be used to second-guess every lawful exercise of self-defense, which will be nit-picked and declared ‘unlawful’ to invoke the bill’s severe punishments against law-abiding citizens with carry permits.” That bill comes as applications for gun carry permits hit record levels in recent months.
onvicted of abuse.
Thursday’s hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Statehouse in Trenton, is open to the public and will be streamed.
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