LAWLESS LAW ENFORCEMENT: New Jersey’s Anti-Gun AG Matt Platkin Makes Complying With the State’s Byzantine Gun Control Laws a Crap Shoot.
The case concerned two undercover buys from the shop by agents of the AG’s office. The first was a box of .223 caliber ammunition and a six-round magazine for a Walther .380 pistol. The second was a 1,000-round case of .223 caliber ammunition. The buyer in each case paid cash.
New Jersey law imposes various explicit (and likely unconstitutional) requirements for the sale of “handgun ammunition.” Sellers must be licensed gun businesses. Buyers who are not so licensed must display a valid Firearms Purchaser Identification Card, a permit to purchase a handgun, or a permit to carry a handgun. Retail sellers of handgun ammunition must record sales and make these records available to state authorities. Sales of 2,000 or more rounds must be “immediately” reported to the state police.
Following the undercover buys, the AG initiated a civil enforcement action against Butch’s Gun World under the reasonable controls statute. Significantly, the complaint did not claim .223 ammunition or the Walther magazine were “handgun ammunition” nor did it claim the sales were a direct violation of the “handgun ammunition” requirements.
Instead, the complaint relied entirely on the idea that Butch’s Gun World had an affirmative duty under the reasonable controls law to apply additional safeguards to the sales of “gun-related products” beyond those specifically dictated by the New Jersey legislature. These “products,” moreover, include not just all types of firearms and ammunition, but “any … ammunition magazine, firearm component or part including, but not limited to, a firearm frame and a firearm receiver, or firearm accessory ….”
The complaint asserted, for example, that Butch’s Gun World should have understood the “reasonable controls” statute as extending certain requirements of the “handgun ammunition” statutes to ALL “gun-related products,” even though there is no language in the law that actually specifies this.
Read the whole thing, but first, this quote from Ayn Rand: “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt.”