As a Democratic package of proposed gun restrictions advances in Trenton, legislative Republicans have split on the issue. (Aristide Economopoulos for New Jersey Monitor)
There have been few things more reliable in Trenton in recent years than Republicans trying to loosen New Jersey’s famously tough gun restrictions — and those proposals going nowhere, year after year, in a Legislature controlled by Democrats.
GOP bills now stalled in the Statehouse range from exempting veterans from gun permit application fees, codifying the right of school and college cops to carry on campus, and clarifying that BB guns are not firearms under the law.
But two Republicans leaped off the party bandwagon last fall to introduce a package of bills that would establish new gun crimes and add several other new firearm restrictions. The proposals were such a detour from the GOP’s usual Second Amendment fealty that the Democrats subsequently introduced a near-identical package of bills, prompting GOP gripes earlier this month that the majority party hijacked their bills.
Assemblywomen Michele Matsikoudis (R-Union), who sponsored the GOP bills with district partner and fellow Republican Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz, said she doesn’t see the measures as a departure from party priorities. Rather, she said, the restrictions she and Munoz proposed align with Republican calls to crack down on crime and protect public safety. Many of the bills target illegally manufactured firearms like 3-D printed guns and gun-involved crimes.
“Illegal gun crime is one of the biggest threats to lawful gun owners and law-abiding citizens,” Matsikoudis said. “So everyone that wants to protect Second Amendment rights will naturally be behind this, because what it’s doing really is separating lawful, law-abiding gun owners from the bad actors and people that are looking to do harm with this new technology that’s untraceable.”
Both Democrats, who trumpeted their version of the bills in a news conference earlier this month, and Matsikoudis said the legislation was inspired by recommendations the State Commission of Investigation issued last spring to foil repeat gun offenders and stem a rising tide of “ghost guns.”
Matsikoudis said she has asked to co-sponsor the Democratic bills, which an Assembly panel recently advanced along party lines.
“Anytime that I can reach across the aisle to come up with good, common-sense legislation, I will do that every day of the week,” Matsikoudis said. “Safety affects everybody.”
At least one of her party peers has no plans to join her.
Assemblyman Bob Auth (R-Bergen) said most of the Democratic bills were unconstitutional or redundant, because they seek to outlaw things that are already illegal, like ghost guns and machine gun conversion devices. Auth, along with Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn (R-Monmouth), voted against most of the Democrats’ gun bills when they were heard by the Assembly’s judiciary committee last month.
“We have some of the most restrictive gun laws in this nation. We have a cornucopia of different gun laws. I think they’ve accomplished the goals that they’ve set out to do, but they just keep piling more on,” Auth told the New Jersey Monitor.
Matsikoudis and Auth dismissed any idea that their differences on the bills signaled any deeper party division on the issue.
“Fifty percent of the people that get married in this country get divorced. I would say that the Republican caucus is doing far better than just the average person who’s trying to survive a marriage,” Auth said. “I think that we agree on more things than we disagree on. I’m never going to agree with anybody on every single issue.”
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