mcbethr

PK90 has also been sick with the flu, so it may take him a few days to respond.

IMHO, if a ban were to happen (which is unlikely), and if it's just like the original AWB, it would make the rest of the country pretty much like NJ. If a new AWB looks just like the old AWB, anything you buy in NJ would still be perfectly legal, 15 round magazines excepted.

*Ahem* Black Rifle Disease. I think I was inoculated at an early age. I prefer the Mini-14 wood style to an AR, but it's just my personal preference.

+1 . I'd rather go to the dentist.

1 million minors can't vote or donate campaign money. I think I know the outcome of this already.

Plenty of people, because they weren't illegal. It was just illegal to sell new "Assault Weapons" to civilians If you read the book "Glock: Rise of American's Gun," Glock was pumping out standard capacity magazines as fast as they could so they could dump them on the market. It was still perfectly legal to sell used standard capacity magazines to someone else or buy them. Civilians just couldn't own new magazines. The funny thing is that the AWB sewed the seeds for carry. Why buy a full-sized gun when you can only put 10 cartridges in it? So gun companies started making smaller guns which were... hey... pretty handy to carry. The gun companies will always find out a way to make money. I wouldn't be surprised if the Kel Tec KSG drives California absolutely ape.

Well, both Beretta and Smith and Wesson manufacture NJ Legal mags for the Px4 Full-size and M&P9 Full size. So there are some companies that do it just for NJ. If you really wanted a 15 rounder 10/22 magazine, one of the forum vendors could probably pin it for you. But a Tri-mag adapter or Quad adapter would probably be cheaper.

Do you realize that every single thing he said was wrong, except the one about the 15 round magazines. Every. Single. Thing.

Use cardboard pizza boxes when your clean your gun. They soak up the oil from your gun and don't mar the finish. Just eat the pizza first.

I look at it as more of a Flight Deck Officer Program for teachers. We arm some pilots after giving them training, why not put some selected teachers through a program and allow them to carry?

Welcome to the forums. Take a look at the video and seriously consider joining NJ2AS.

No, I haven't. I have 22 other books on my to-read list that I haven't gotten to because I seem to spend all my free time on NJGF.

I was actually just thinking about this. The last AWB didn't quite work because you can't really define "Assault Rifle." The government came up with a list of banned guns and features, and the gun companies just changed the names of the guns, removed the features and *poof* you suddenly have a perfectly legal post-ban weapon that is essentially the same as pre-ban gun. The essential problem is that defining a "assault weapon" is kind of like the problem Judge Potter Stewart had in defining pornography: he couldn't define it, but "I know it when I see it." http://en.wikipedia....t_when_I_see_it You can't ban "assault weapons" without banning basically every semi-automatic gun in existence, from your grandfather's WWII era Colt .45 to your mom's .380 LCP because the main feature is the magazine-fed semi-auto action. So take a Ruger Mini-14 with a wood stock. Sure looks like a hunting rifle to me. Now take off the wood stock and put on a plastic stock and you have a pant-wetting, evil "Assault Weapon." It's the same gun, but don't let logic get in the way of a good panic. But what they *could* do, if the government were smart, is create an "approved" list like California has for pistols. Companies would have to submit their weapons to the ATF for "safety tests." If the ATF approves, then citizens can own the gun. If the ATF disapproves then that gun is not made available for sale. Under a system like this, the Marlin Camp Carbine would be a-OK! The CX4 Storm is an evil black rifle. America would be left with their 1911's, revolvers and thin CCW guns. You would still have pump-shotguns, double barrels and bolt-action hunting rifles. You would still have 10/22's and M1 Garands. But our laws would look more like France, Italy and Germany than what we had in America. I don't want that one bit, but an "approved" list is one way to get to that model. That is the only way this sort of thing could work. I am not personally afraid. The President is a smart man. He saw what happened to Clinton's party in the House after the AWB in 1996. He doesn't want that to happen to him.

With what tools do they intend to commit this act?

The part number for the S&W M&P 15 round magazines is 39498. I'd give S&W a call. They may be able to give you an idea of when the magazines might be available again. The M&P is a fine gun, but you will always be able to find 92FS magazines. The gun is in use by our military, so you will always be able to find parts and magazines.

NJ is way, way ahead of you, my friend... NJ has has a smart gun law for quite a while now. Only deal is the law is supposed to kick in once a smart gun is realistically viable. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/smart_gun_still_hasnt_hit_the.html

The Freakanomics guy? Yes. I should email him about this.

I'm not saying that high property taxes necessarily attract the rich, although what do the rich look for? "Good schools" I could crunch those numbers, but I don't think that any of the top crime cities have good schools. That's my conclusion too! When you have Rich and Poor in close proximity, you have a greater chance for the poor to commit crimes against "better targets." It is the property taxes that force people into this situation. For the most part, you either have people who live in "rich" towns with high property taxes and low crime or the "poor" who pay low property taxes live in high crime areas. There are very, very few towns like Vineland or Toms River where people who have and people who don''t live right next to each other. I don't think it's a coincidence that these two towns are basically in the middle of nowhere in this state (meaning far from commuting distance to Philadelphia or New York). This lowers the opportunity for them to have truly "wealthy" individuals who commute to high-paying jobs in Philadelphia or New York. Instead, the "rich" in these towns are small business owners and tradesman. The middle class are the semi-skilled service and technical workers, and the poor are the minimum wage service workers. If you live in Vineland and are a plumber, you are "rich" compared to a minimum wage employee who works at the Wawa where the plumber gets his coffee. The difference between Vineland and Cherry Hill is that in Vineland, both the plumber and the Wawa clerk live in Vineland. In Cherry Hill, the plumber may live there, but the Wawa employee probably commutes from Maple Shade. If I am wrong, then why do we have the "Mount Laurel Doctrine" where NJ tried to force wealthy towns like Mt. Laurel to zone certain areas of their towns to build "affordable housing?" http://en.wikipedia....Laurel_doctrine ? Why would we the state need this law if certain towns weren't taxing the poor out of their the ability to live there? This goes back to my main theory, in NJ, you either live in a comparatively wealthy town where you don't think you need a gun, or a poor town where you wish guns would just go away. Yes, NJ is populated with middle class towns, but they are too small to make a difference, and that is why our laws are so hard to change.

So I finally sat down to crunch some numbers. Here are a couple of things to note: Just because you don’t like what I’m saying doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. There is already a group of people who ignore facts because it doesn’t help their case. Those people are called antis. The OP asked why NJ is the way it is. I gave a pretty reasonable explanation using qualitative data. Now I’ll use quantitative data. In this paper I’m concentrating on burglary and robbery. These are the crimes in which a reasonable person may want a gun to defend their home and person. I’m not looking at murder or rape. There is too much variance in why people are murdered (crimes of passion, drug deals gone wrong) and most rapes are not “stranger rape” type scenarios. I’m also not looking at targeted crime, where a wealthy individual is specifically targeted (like Dr. Petit) for his wealth. I am looking at the traditional scenario of a burglar in the night or opportunistic stick-up – in other words the typical scenario that most of us think of when we envision being forced to use a gun. My initial argument was that high property taxes are the real reason why guns are so unpopular in this state. High property taxes have segregated New Jersey into two basic communities: rich towns with high property taxes and poor towns with low property taxes. There are very few populous towns that have a mix of wealthy and poor individuals. This is not the case in many other states, where the rich, poor, and middle class live in different areas of the same town. Some baseline figures. The poverty line in New Jersey is $22,881 per year. (http://www.nj.com/ne...es_for_4th.html) The median income in New Jersey is $71,180. This tends to be a better indicator then average household income. (http://quickfacts.ce...34/3412385.html) You can argue that the poor can just drive to wealthy areas and rob the wealthy. This sounds good in theory. But if this is the case, then why isn’t the burglary and robbery rate in the wealthier areas of the state higher than poorer towns? The answer could be in racial profiling or better alarm systems, but for some reason, the poor just don’t seem to be flocking to wealthy towns to commit crimes. I used the US Census (http://quickfacts.ce.../qfd/index.html) and the FBI Uniform Crime reports from 2010 to compile this data. (http://www.fbi.gov/a...printable-files ) . 2011 is the last year of reliable information. Not all towns were in the census, so they were removed from the crime spreadsheet. THE THEORY: New Jersey residents don’t care about guns because there are basically two types of towns in New Jersey: rich towns and poor towns. In rich towns, there is low crime and people don’t think that you need a gun. In poor towns, there is too much crime and people want guns to just disappear from their lives. There are very, very few “mixed” towns where an average citizen would want a gun for self defense. In this first chart, we see the top 10 cities for crime in NJ. No surprises there, but the median income is $38,874, which is about 1.7 times the poverty line. Also note that the population in the top 10 cities is 1,197,930. Of the top 10 cities, only Toms River is remotely close to the median income and is the closest to my “mixed” theory. Now let’s take a look at the bottom 10 cities for crime. Most of these towns have fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. It’s obvious that there would be little crime. The total population of the bottom 10 cities is 69,049. But let’s take the median income of $71,180 and go from there. Interesting, we have median income and still very little crime. The total population is 175,153. Maybe we’re dealing with bad data? What if we take the average NJ town size of 23,447? These “average-sized” NJ towns have incomes that average 4 times the poverty line. With the exception of Roselle, crime doesn’t seem that bad in these towns. Most of these towns are very close to the NJ state median income. The total population of all of these towns is 248,857 Let’s increase selection sample and expand the selection by 1.5 and take towns between 35,170 and 11,723. The image is too large to show, but the average income is $78,494 and the average and the total population of all 59 cities in the expanded sample is 1,064,560. Let’s just take take the top 10 cities for crime in the expanded sample, we see this: Interesting? I think this is the stat that we are looking for, “middle class” cities – average population size where the rich live in close proximity to the poor and may need a gun to defend their homes. I think I hit the nail on the head in my previous post when I mentioned Vineland and Toms River as being one of those few “middle class” cities and the crime rate correlates with my original theory. The total population of these top 10 cities is 211,260. If I take the entire population of towns below Collingswood on this chart – that is every town with a crime rate below 128 crimes per year and add up the population, I get a total of 1,592,758 people who don’t care about guns because crime never happens in their town. If I take the inhabitance of the top 10 crime-ridden cities I get 1,197,930 people who want guns out of their life. This gives me a total of 2,790,688 people who either hate guns or don’t see the need for one and 211,260 of people who live in “mixed” towns where they may reasonably want a gun for home or self defense. This means that the deck is stacked against us when it comes to improving New Jersey’s gun laws because you are either live in a town with no crime so you don’t “need” a gun, or you are poor and live in a town where you want guns out of your life. QED. Now I’m going to bed.

I lived in Woodbury about 25 years ago in a house right on the golf course and spent 1 year in the High School there. I drove through the town recently and I was shocked - the golf course shut down and was overrun with weeds. That's a shame, it was a nice little town and you could walk everywhere. But you had your good side (by the golf course), your middle class side (basically west of Broad Street) and your poor side which I guess would have been south of Delaware and west of Broad. I don't know if its still like that.

You're certainly done your homework. IMHO, you can't go wrong with the Beretta 92FS. Go with that gun and you can skip getting a .22LR gun because you can just buy the .22LR Conversion kit for the Beretta and shoot all day for just $0.03 per round. The Sig P226 has a conversion kit as well, but I prefer Beretta. Shoot both and see what you like more. Or buy both. It sounds like you are in the Philly area. Where do you live? If you are in the Philadelphia area, PM me if you want to shoot my Beretta 92FS. I'll meet you at a range in Philly sometime and you can fire it up. Quel Hoth has an M&P9 Pro, he loves the thing. I've fired both the M&P9 and the M&P9 Pro. Go with the Pro if you want to compete, it has a much better trigger. If you are a NJ resident, there isn't much advantage in going to a Philadelphia gun show for a pistol since it will have to be transferred via an FFL to NJ. Any money you save on price will be removed by transfer fees. Plus, if you buy it at a local gun store, they will show you how to take it apart and clean it. A clerk at a gun show may be less interested in doing that for you, especially since he can sell on the spot to PA gun owners and you are just going to eat up his time. I wouldn't go with a .40 caliber pistol unless you are in law enforcement and there is a simple reason why. 9mm costs about $15.00 a box. .40 costs about $18.00 a box. You are effectively paying 37% more for money for 10% more power and 10% more mass and 20% *less* capacity. But if you are a police office and want a carry or range gun and you get a couple boxes a month from your department for practice it's not a bad choice. But if you are a civilian, what would you practice with more? 9mm is just fine for anything you may encounter. My first pistol was a .40 Caliber Glock .22, but that was back when I wasn't into shooting, I just wanted something for HD that was simple and powerful and more importantly, used by police. I've now standardized on 9mm for HD and .45 / .22 LR for fun. Finally, if you love the CZ75 SP01, buy it. Life is to short to shoot guns that other people think you should have. Buy what you love. Welcome to the sport, have fun and be safe and seriously consider joining nj2as.org .

See if you can get your hands comfortably around the PX4 Compact. It's a little smaller, but somehow a lot more concealable if you ever wanted or needed to go that route. It also comes with 15 round magazines. So does the PX4 Full Size, but I think you'll have to buy them aftermarket.

I'll admit that could be the case. It's certainly possible that I'm dealing with a large enough pool of data. We would have to do some heavy analysis and map out low in come areas and high income areas and see if there is a correlation. But the other question is this: Let's take the inverse. Give me another explanation. What makes NJ so different if it isn't the separation of class? You can't point to "The Media" because NJ really doesn't have its own Media. We have Philadelphia's Media and New York's Media. PA is Shall-issue and New York state is "May-Issue" but a little more permissible then NJ - you at least stand a chance at getting a carry permit in New York State and they rely on straight NICS for longarms outside of NYC. I don't think you can say "Sheeple" because there are "Sheeple" everywhere. You may be able to point to NJ's FID system and say: "Well, the FID inconvenienced people and over time it was just too much trouble to own a gun, so people just didn't do it unless they were enthusiasts or hunters." That could be a reasonable explanation. If you leave NJ, it's quite common to meet people who have one gun at home that they bought, put 50 rounds down range, and threw in their nightstand never to take out again. You *never* see that in NJ, except for maybe some older men who have one revolver or an old .22 rifle. People who own guns here tend to either be enthusiasts who are at the range every weekend or hunters. I suppose you have to be an enthusiast in this state because a person who wants a gun just to shoot once and put in their nightstand is probably not going to want one bad enough to go through the process. But... the state of Illinois has an FID system as well, and they don't have an AWB, bad transportation laws, or capacity limits outside of Chicago. You could point at the acute lack of places to shoot. Maybe people just aren't interested in shooting because NJ is pretty densely populated where most people live and there are a limited number of places where you can shoot? Contrast that with PA, where some people can just walk outside and shoot on their property. Yes, I know there are people in NJ who do that but they either they live in Cumberland or Warren County and like I said before, are outside of that population band. So is it possible that people aren't interested in guns because there aren't enough places to shoot? I don't think so. If you are interested, you find a place. So far in this thread, we've seen: these ideas tossed about: "I noticed in this state its usually uneducated." "IGNORANT. Sheeple." "NRA threw NJ under the bus" "the media making all gun owners out to be silly, unreasonable, unnecessary, or just downright crazy" But many of these items are more symptoms than causes. "Uneducated" and "Ignorant" is a symptom. What is the cause? "The Media" could be a cause, but what makes NJ so special when other states have liberal media as well? And regarding the NRA, have they thrown California under the bus as well? The original question was: "In other States, groups have been able to get new gun laws passed but what is the problem with NJ which seems to be getting more restrictive? I think the genuine answer is because there is such class distinction that the rich see no need for guns and the poor just want them the heck out of their communities. If you don't own a gun, don't know anybody who owns a gun, and never intend on owning one, you don't care what kind of gun-laws the state passes. If you are a poor black or Hispanic living in Camden who equates guns with gang members, or who has had your friends and family shot, you probably think it's crazy to let people carry guns around. Remember what Sherlock Holmes said: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I honestly think that the truth is that there is such separation of class in NJ that the bad guys and victims don't tend to meet up that often. This isn't true in Florida or Texas or PA where there are literally good and bad parts of town and everybody shops at the same Wal Mart. Unless we get some sort of judicial remedy, I do not think carry laws are going to change until we get an equivalent of Dr. Susan Hupp. Some woman - and it has to be a white, wealthy woman who is easy on the eyes (think Emily Miller) who also owns a gun, but cannot carry it - needs to be assaulted and survive the attack with a compelling enough story to change the hearts and minds of every soccer mom from Cherry Hill to Short Hills. Then we will see change.

I didn't think of that, especially since General Growth Properties has that mall listed as a "gun free" zone. The police have a conundrum on their hands if a CCW holder stopped that shooting,. Do they prosecute a guy who just saved dozens of people?

Actually, no. Or at least very, very rarely. Most of the break ins that happen in Cherry Hill are done during the day and are either done by teenagers looking for prescription drugs or landscapers who walk through an unlocked door to take the wife's iPhone or Purse that is sitting on the table as soon as you come in the door. The poor in Camden are not coming to Cherry Hill to rob someone in my neighborhood, the neighbors would profile them in a second. But the poor will turn on each other. The fact is that people from Camden would feel just as uncomfortable in Cherry Hill as someone from Cherry Hill would feel in Camden. When I think of "middle class" towns in New Jersey, I think of Burlington, Vineland, Toms River, Philipsburg. These are towns where you are considered middle class if you are an electrician who is married to a teacher. You know what I'm talking about: it's the family in the rancher house with the Dodge Ram truck (complete with tool boxes) in the driveway and the Hyundai Elantra parked on the street. They are also the towns were a single mother can "almost" make it if she works as a dispatcher at a trucking company, and her ex's alimony checks clear on time. But these towns are few and far between in NJ. If you live in NJ, you either live in Cherry Hill or Camden. Princeton or Trenton. Short Hills, or Newark. Now there are plenty of people on this board who are from Cumberland County, the Jackson Area and the Northwest NJ, but the fact is that most of the decision makers in this state live in a belt that parallels I-295 as it leaves Camden and moves all the way up to Exit 7 of the NJ Turnpike until it reaches Newark. If you live along that belt, you are either rich and don't "need" a gun or you are poor and you are terrified of gun violence and wish all of the guns would just go away. Politicians will always exploit those sentiments. We have effectively contained crime by making it prohibitively expensive to live in an area where crime actually pays: that is middle class towns. The chances of you ever encountering a person from the "wrong" side of the tracks, as you would in many other states, are very, very low. The rich, poor, and shrinking middle class just don't tend to interact in NJ so the chances for crimes of opportunity are rare.