When the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, it lacked a Bill of Rights to protect against the resurgence of tyranny in our land. Thankfully, just two years later, the first Ten Amendments were added to ensure that Americans forever would enjoy their God-given rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The First Amendment within our Bill of Rights, of course, guarantees Americans the rights of free expression and free political assembly, the right to petition our government for redress, freedom from government-imposed religion, and the right to exercise our own faiths as we see fit. These fundamental rights certainly lie at the heart of what it means to be an American.
But the Second Amendment may be the most essential element of our Bill of Rights because the right of Americans to keep and bear arms protects our remaining Constitutional rights – including those in the First Amendment. Tyrannical regimes enslave their subjects by disarming them. Indeed, history demonstrates that an armed citizenry ultimately is the only effective bulwark against tyranny.
Our Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Despite its elegant simplicity, this straightforward proclamation of our right to self-defense is misunderstood by those who aren’t aware of the late 18th century meaning of some of its terminology – particularly the widely-misunderstood phrase “well regulated Militia.” In 1792, the general “Militia” consisted of all physically able men irrespective of military service; it was a reference to the American citizenry as a whole rather than to any state or federal armed forces. And the term “well regulated” meant what we today would characterize as “well organized.”
So the framers intended the Second Amendment to guarantee the rights of Americans not only to “keep and bear arms” for their personal protection but also to organize themselves into a protective force against anyone or anything that might threaten the “security” of our Constitutional Republic as a “free State” – whether emanating from within or outside our borders. Moreover, although the Second Amendment – like the rest of the Bill of Rights – originally constrained only the federal government, our adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 extended its protection to the States. Since then, therefore, every State has been required by the United States Constitution to safeguard the right of its residents to keep and bear arms.
Nevertheless, many States long ignored this Constitutional mandate by making it virtually impossible to exercise the right to “bear” a concealed firearm. Thankfully, in 2022, the United States Supreme Court brought this Constitutional arrogance to an end by ruling in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that – by default – Americans in every State enjoy the Constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon. Accordingly, rather than require concealed carry applicants to demonstrate their “need” for such a permit – as those States long had done – all States now must justify their denial of a concealed carry permit to any of their residents.
For whatever historical, political, cultural, or other reason, New Jersey long has harbored particular animosity toward the Second Amendment. Not surprisingly, therefore, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy reacted to Bruen with venom not unlike that of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus following the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing racial discrimination in education: Murphy trumpeting his intention to do everything possible to undermine Bruen, and the Murphy-controlled legislature quickly adopted legislation prohibiting New Jersians from carrying a concealed firearm in virtually all public (and many private) places. Large portions of this ill-motivated bill promptly were ruled unlawful by federal courts, and litigation over this malign legislation is ongoing.
Despite Murphy’s bluster, however, New Jersey had no choice but to issue concealed carry permits after Bruen. But New Jersey took this requirement as an opportunity to amplify its assault on the Second Amendment – including by abusing its own laws governing the use of firearms. For example, Sections 2C:3-4 and 2C:3-11 of the New Jersey Revised Statutes expressly permit a person confronted with unlawful force –including verbal or physical assault, or confinement – to “produc[e] a weapon or otherwise, so long as the actor’s purpose is limited to creating an apprehension that he will use deadly force if necessary,” and so long as that person “reasonably believes that such [action] is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself.”
But the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) ignores these unambiguous provisions when dealing with those to whom New Jersey grudgingly has issued a concealed carry permit. Instead, the NJSP takes the legally (and logically) baseless position that the mere production of a firearm in self-defense in the absence of imminent death or serious bodily injury – which is the legal standard for firing a weapon in self-defense, not merely producing the weapon with no intention of firing it – constitutes the felonious possession of that firearm for an unlawful purpose. In so doing, the NJSP removes a primary goal of concealed carry – defending oneself without firing the weapon – thereby effectively neutering concealed carry and rendering it a fool’s errand in New Jersey.
Thus, when the NJSP learns that a concealed carry permit holder merely has produced a firearm in self defense – irrespective of the particular facts or circumstances – its immediate, knee-jerk reaction is to charge that person with a felony while secretly obtaining a court order behind the person’s back permitting its troopers to confiscate all of his firearms without any prior notice or hearing, and without so much as obtaining that person’s side of the story. And this outrageous violation of the fundamental rights of New Jersians occurs irrespective of whether the situation involves any injury, urgency, or danger to anyone, and irrespective of the age, occupation, reputation, and criminal record (or lack thereof) of the target citizen. A more blatant violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments is difficult to fathom.
But this incipient tyranny does not end there in New Jersey. Rather, in this benighted State virtually any person may run into a New Jersey court to accuse another person behind his or her back of having made “threats” – including even a lying retributive spouse in the midst of a contentious divorce proceeding! – and New Jersey courts respond by issuing similar orders to confiscate the accused person’s firearms, again without any prior notice or opportunity to be heard.
Notwithstanding the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to our sacred federal Constitution, and contrary to a litany of modern Supreme Court decisions, New Jersey persists in treating firearm ownership as a privilege to be granted at the discretion of a benevolent government rather than a God-given and Constitutionally-protected right of its residents. This must end, whether by Supreme Court dictate or through the long-awaited maturation of its electorate. New Jersey firearm owners cannot forever be treated as second class citizens.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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