wooly bugger

I hope they at least had the common sense to do it in a CCW-free theater. Like in Colorado.

I don't know the law, but given the history of entrapment by NYPD, I'd be hesitant to fly into LGA with a copy of Guns&Ammo, let alone real ammo. If you break the law, you go to jail. If they break the law, you go to jail

Highly doubtful this will make a difference, given that the vote is tomorrow, but here's what I just sent to Sweeney and Norcross: Dear Senator Sweeney, I am writing to express my profound disappointment with the way in which public comment on S2723 has been handled. The amended bill was released to the public on Friday night in preparation for a Monday vote, thus allowing no time for comment. I am particularly disappointed that you and the other sponsors inserted an 11th hour FID option; that of a separate document that expires every 4 years. It is worse that you leave the choice between the nonexpiring driver license endorsement and the expiring separate FID to the attorney general. Though on the surface, the choice between the options may seem a technicality, in fact there are major differences in impact. The choice should be made with due process, by accountable legislators. Not by fiat by an attorney general who cannot be held accountable by the voters who will suffer the consequences of his choice. Both choices are bad. A DL endorsement eliminates the possibility of visibly demonstrating an FID to anyone without a special scanner. The every 4 year reapplication process mandated by a separate, expiring FID will be a bureaucratic nightmare. Under the current system, what used to be a 15 minute "instant background check" has buckled under the pressure of a slight increase in volume and now takes 3-4 weeks. The current system can't handle NEW FID applications, let alone an additional yearly burden of 25% of all existing FID holders. Given the contempt for gun owners recently revealed by some of your colleagues, it is inconceivable that there will be any significant investment in infrastructure to help gun owners. Instead, the system will collapse, and Senators Weinberg, Greenstein, and others will take the credit for a clever end run around gun ownership in the state. There is a simple fix: a non-expiring, separate FID. Given the multiple redundancies in background checks required at point of sale, and given the capability with the new system to instantly deactivate an existing FID, there is absolutely no legitimate reason for anyone to have to reapply for their FID every 4 years. I understand that may of your constituents are gun owners and hunters. Unfortunately, most are not aware of what's happening right now. But if S2723 passes, there will be a rude and unpleasant awakening. Please use your considerable influence to fix the flaws in this bill before it's too late. Sincerely,

A little off topic, but my friend got an unrestricted CCW in Cambridge, MA which is politically a little right of Berkeley, CA. He has no special justification and doesn't even have a gun. When his wife applied, she had limitations placed on hers, so must have been a fluke.

If I were the praying type, I'd pray that someone from NJ2AS or ANJRPC (you know, the guys doing "the heavy lifting" behind the scenes) is feeding this wisdom into Sweeney's ear in real time and making it clear that when his rural constituents walk into this s*** storm, he's toast. I'm willing to believe that he just hasn't thought through some of these provisions to their full implications. If he had, he's smart enough to know that he'll face a revolt at home as soon as the good old boy fudds get hit in the face with this and finally wake up to what he just did to them.

It won't be every 4 years. It will be a permanent rolling process, since the reapplication process will be phased in and there will be new FID holders coming in continuously. Assuming 1MM gun owners, that's 250k FID applications each year, on top of the current volume. And this will grow every year, as new FID holders enter the reapplication pool. There's no way they'll be able to process FIDs in any semblance of an acceptable time period, unless they make massive infrastructure investments, which obviously they won't. And now that FID and P2P will be needed for handgun ammo purchases, that probably means years where we'll be stuck in limbo with no ammo. The worst case scenario is if PA does what they do now with guns and require that sales of ammo to out of state residents must meet the requirements of that resident's home state. Then there's just no way out.

The P2P endorsement has to be renewed, but as I interpret it, not the FID. Here's the section: " (1) A firearms purchaser identification card shall remain valid, and the affirmation of that fact shall be embedded on a holder’s driver’s license or identification card, and each replacement or renewal thereof, until that person becomes disqualified under the provisions of N.J.S.2C:58-3." I'm not sure whether requiring every 4 year reapplications in the separate FID option is a poison pill, so that we can't get everything we want (permanent separate FID), or if it's just sloppiness from cutting and pasting the original Assembly bill that required every 5 year reapplication. It just doesn't make sense why one option should be permanent and the other should last only 4 years. I guess this is why in a democracy, there is a public comments period before a legislative body votes on a bill.This stuff has been available to us literally 24 hours, and depending on what time they vote on Monday, it will have been less than one business day for public comment. The senators aren't any smarter than us, and I'm sure a lot of them are a hell of a lot less interested in the technicalities. Most will just skim it Monday morning and vote for it without even knowing what they're bringing down on us. It's pure indifferent hatred. Kind of like seeing an annoying cockroach and just stomping on it rather than shooing it out the door.

There's two processes described and they're going to fob the decision on which to follow to the AG so he can take the fall when either one crashes and burns. This is getting surreal.

I'm reading the bill now and see that it puts in a clever poison pill to the separate FID option. In section 1, it states that an FID can be either a DL with endorsement or a separate FID, TBD by the AG. Under section 4 e 1 it states: " (1) A firearms purchaser identification card shall remain valid, and the affirmation of that fact shall be embedded on a holder’s driver’s license or identification card, and each replacement or renewal thereof, until that person becomes disqualified under the provisions of N.J.S.2C:58-3." So, a DL endorsement is good for life. But then in the new section 10d: "d. A firearms purchaser identifier that displays a digitalized color picture of the card holder and issued pursuant to this act, shall be valid for a period of four years, unless the holder shall otherwise become subject to any of the disabilities set forth in subsection c. of N.J.S.2C.58-3. A firearms purchaser identifier issued pursuant to this section shall expire on the last day of the 48th calendar month following the calendar month in which it was issued, at which time the firearms purchaser identifier may be renewed in the same manner and under the same conditions that applied to original applications required under this act and N.J.S.2C:58-3." So, if we get our wish of a separate FID, we'll be reapplying for the damned thing every 4 years. Which, in the current environment, means that as soon as you get it, you'll start reapplying for the next 4 year cycle in a constant bureaucratic nightmare. Is this just blatant stupidity on the part of the authors of this hastily thrown together travesty, or is it something more sinister? Right now, I find the prospect of reapplying to exercise my rights every 4 years the most appalling feature. EDIT: Wow, just finished reading the whole thing. This is much worse than the original and will become a serious cluster F if it's not vetoed. If the separate FID with constant renewals gets chosen by our AG, the system will seize up, and no one will be able to buy anything for however many years it takes for a lawsuit to clear it up. I foresee lots of FFLs going out of business. Also, no limitations on how the ammunition database can be used. No mandatory destruction of records after a certain time period. So basically, the police will be able to review all of your ammunition purchases from the date of passage of this bill for the rest of your life.

At the Westfield cult gathering, Cryan mentioned that he got 2000 negative emails about his bills an 0 positive. The negatives were obviously not all from his district, but this has to be a wake up call. When it comes to the ballot box, we'll be out in force. The antis are fair weather friends at best. We don't need to retake the senate and assembly, we need to make an example of ONE politician. Right now, Wagner and Eustace seem to be most vulnerable. Come November, I will be donating to their Republican challengers.

EFF is great. I've been a fan of theirs since before I was a gun person.

It's OK, the ACLU will defend his free speech rights. Right, ACLU???

I've purchased plenty of gun stuff through Paypal. Is that against the rules?

Here's an email that just went out to Sweeney and Sarlo, Dear Senators Sweeney and Sarlo, I would like to bring to your attention some damning comments made by members of the Budget committee following yesterday's hearing. The comments can be heard in the link below. I would like to know who the two women on the tape were. Given their blatant contempt, I question their legitimacy to impartially judge bills that affect gun owners who "just want to play with their little guns." I find chilling their desire for bills to "confiscate, confiscate, confiscate." Finally, I question their professionalism. They are a discredit to the committee and to the senate as a whole. If the target of their scorn were any minority other than gun owners, we would be hearing of their resignations by now. At a minimum, I hope you will teach them a lesson in conduct becoming of a state senator. Ideally, I would ask that you reconsider the legitimacy of yesterday's hearings. Sincerely,

And the "target" permit is only valid for use at a range within NYC. No taking it to NJ to shoot

That's sad, because she did a good job of faking being a reasonable person in the Law & Public Safety committee meeting. Are there friendly Senators who might help us confirm the identity of the voices? Played properly, this could be big. At first I just assumed the "confiscate, confiscate, confiscate" was dramatic video editing. But I guess it wasn't. It's creepy coming seemingly out of nowhere. Sounds like a rallying cry to me. We can add this to a montage with Cuomo's famous musings about "confiscation is an option."

Have you seen the definite text on that yet? It wasn't in the original version, so I'm curious what they put in. I can't think of any Constitutional way they can compel out of state vendors to report anything to the police.

And how is this enforceable?

I'm surprised she only gets "a little weird" when you have your pistol out. I can't think of too many associations with pistols that are more traumatic than what she went through. If she never wanted to see one again, I wouldn't give her a hard time about it. That being said, you're in a unique situation that I don't think any of us have dealt with. The first thing I would do, with our without this situation, is to make sure that any PTSD has been addressed the best it can. There's no shame in seeking counseling (although our legislators are trying to fix that) so it might be good to start there. After that, I guess it's really up to her, but I wouldn't push things. Having the gun out for her to see might be a good thing, in that it can gradually desensitize her fearful response, or a bad thing, in that it just rips open old wounds. One approach might be to start her on something much less threatening, like taking her out for sporting clays, before trying to reintroduce her to pistols. Good luck, and I wish her the best.

At the point that someone posts on FB to "spread the word so everyone can get some!"

Great job to whomever cleaned this up. It's perfect I couldn't believe the "confiscate" part. I didn't catch the context. I think it was a mistake to repeat it twice, because now it sounds like it's been edited in. Now we need to figure out who the voices are. They're clear enough that anyone who knows them should be able to ID them. If she really said, "confiscate," this will go national.

I'm getting a message that this was removed by user

This is a remarkable statement on how seriously they take their jobs. First, the bill was slipped into the agenda at the last minute, then the text of the bill is kept secret, even from the committee, then they apparently didn't even bother to quantify the budgetary impact of the ghost bill, beyond "not much," and now it's going to the full Senate.

Here's an email I just sent off to Sen Sarlo, Dear Senator Sarlo, I understand that a modified version of S2723 was heard at your committee meeting today but no detailed budget was presented. I would imagine this bill, if passed into law, will cost tens of millions of taxpayer dollars but would like to see a quantitative estimate. Could you send me that estimate? Thank you.

According to that, since .22lr isn't specifically designed for a handgun then you wouldn't need a P2P to buy it. Tell that to Dick's. Right now they treat .22 as handgun, and I'll be surprised if they'll suddenly change their minds. Also, "specifically designed to be used ONLY in a handgun?" Does this mean .357 magnum is OK? Looks like the ignorance of our lawmakers can help us once in awhile.