We’ve written about the Kafkaesque case of Brian Aitken before. You may have heard about what can happen to someone caught in America’s armpit with so much as a single .22 hollow point round. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says the Garden State’s hideous gun laws aren’t his fault. That’s probably true, at least in part. Most of the damage to residents’ civil rights was done before he was ever elected to office. The question is . . .
why is someone like Brian Aitken made to spend even a day behind bars? Why are New Jersey’s law-abiding gun owners presumed to be a danger to society by the state’s law enforcement apparatus? And how is it that someone with so little regard for a fundamental, constitutionally protected civil right is even considered a viable candidate for the most important job in the world?
[h/t Polar_Bear718]
If we don’t get a republican with constitutionalist tendencies in to run for president we are just going to be going down the same path we have been for the last 20 years… And that path is leading to the dissolution of our Republic.
Too bad we haven’t had one of those since the 1920’s.
We haven’t been a Republic since 1865, so dissolution would be the best option for liberty.
Seriously? America may not be living up to its founding principles, especially in certain red corners, but it’s the best there is. Can you name a nation that’s more free? There won’t be anymore Mayflowers until space travel improves drastically.
Calvin, being the “most free” police state is not much comfort. Just because all the other shitty countries are worse, doesn’t mean America isn’t profoundly broken. The founders of this nation wouldn’t even recognize the mess we’ve made of their great experiment.
More like from 1861 when Lincoln started the war of Northern Aggression and spent the next 4 years violating every Constitutional restriction on the Federal Government along with the entire Bill of Rights.
I don’t get your point. Breaking it up would – and the chaos that implies – would be better than the comparatively minor encroachment we have now?
Calvin your head in the ground approach to life is refreshing, what doctor would prescribe me the same meds you’re taking?
Calvin, where would we be today if men like Washington, Adams, Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin had decided that it wasn’t worth upsetting the apple cart and enduring a little chaos?
And why would you pick 1865? While the Civil War may have had something to say about federalism it’s absurd to claim it killed the republic. After all, what sort of republic was it where such a large group of people not only couldn’t vote but were enslaved? How is that POSSIBLY something to look back fondly towards?
Let’s skip the part about slavery and talk about the fundamental principles of the founding document itself, which is the point of the post above. The principle ideology is that the federal government is created by–and therefore subservient to–the People and the States, an ideology harking back to the original Articles of Confederation that the States were independent sovereigns who had federated together for common purposes. That experiment failed when the central government could not raise enough funds to carry out its purpose, so the Constitution was drafted to grant those powers to the fed. But the ideology remained that the fed was subservient to the States. One of the primary issues prior to and during the Civil War, as strongly demonstrated by the arguments as to whether the individual states had the right to maintain slavery–was as to which had supremacy, an issue that fails resolution even to this day. But it is clear that in order to preserve the Union, Lincoln had to stand on a principle of federal supremacy, that the individual states lacked the power and right to withdraw from the United States, as he himself said many times. The result of the Civil War, then, was to move from a republican model to a Federalist model of government.
In substance, I think I largely agree with you. The way you state your case in a couple of places, I disagree:
“. . . ideology remained that the fed was subservient to the States.” I don’t think this statement stands up. The Federal government was to be subservient to the People at large. Each State was assumed to be subservient to its citizens. The Federal government and State governments divided the power of a state between then according to principles laid out in the Federal Constitution.
The Federal governments subservience to the People at large operated largely through their respective States. If push-came-to-shove, the States could order an Article V convention and overpower the Federal government.
“One of the primary issues prior to and during the Civil War, as strongly demonstrated by the arguments as to whether the individual states had the right to maintain slavery–was as to which had supremacy, an issue that fails resolution even to this day.” I doubt that this argument can be maintained. That the States that allowed slavery had the right to maintain slavery was never questioned to my memory. Whether new States could be admitted as slave-states was a huge political argument – but, it was an argument over power in the Federal government not about the Constitutionality of slavery.
“But it is clear that in order to preserve the Union, Lincoln had to stand on a principle of federal supremacy, that the individual states lacked the power and right to withdraw from the United States, as he himself said many times.” This is true; but it was a somewhat novel idea when it arose in the mid 19th century. In the 18th century and early 19th century I believe it was always assumed that the States could succeed. Indeed, some Northern States considered succeeding long before the Civil War.
“The result of the Civil War, then, was to move fom a republican model to a Federalist model of government.” This is an incorrect usage of the term “Federalist model”. I would have written “. . . toward a centralized model of government”. There remain a fair number of principles of federalism that clearly prevail. For example, after a person is tried and acquitted in a Federal/State court he can be tried and convicted in a State/Federal court without triggering the protection of double-jeopardy. The defense of this dubious practice is that in any such case “separate sovereignties” are acting independently. It remains the case that neither an US prosecutor nor a State prosecutor can pursue a vendetta by repeatedly infighting an individual for a given crime. Nevertheless, each is empowered to take his separate dip at the well.
In substance, you are correct. Since the Civil War, the New Deal and the Great Society we have been on a downward spiral of ever-widening encroachment by the Federal government on powers always intended to be reserved to the States.
Please read “The Real Lincoln” or any of 100 other books that looks at the facts of the Civil War, not the crap we got fed in school. He did not start the Civil War to free the slaves. If that were the point he would have attached a plantation not instigated the first shots at a facility constructed to extract tariffs. Even when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation it only freed slaves in the areas in rebellion. Lincoln wanted a white nation and for blacks to be sent to the Caribbean or South America or back to Africa.
We can’t skip the part about slavery. Slavery is integral the the slave states’ reasons for seceding from the union. Since they seceded over whether or not any new slave states would be admitted to the union, and had pushed hard for quite while to keep at least some new states being slave states. The only real reason I can think of for this is to prevent a three quarter majority in the Senate of anti slavery senators. Which is only to be feared if they might amend the constitution to abolish slavery. So no matter how you slice it, slavery is at the heart of the Civil War, even though it was not at the heat of Lincoln’s motivations. In the end it all came down to slave states using the idea of liberty to support their own violations of the same.
Even if we accept that slavery is constitutional (afterall, anything in the constitution is by definition constitutional), we cannot deny that it is contrary to the philosophy of America. Slavery had always been a tumor in our constitution. A remnant of old world thinking that tainted the new world, and the allowance of a slave trade in the colonies by Britain was one of the reasons to declare independence. In fact, of all the grievances listed in the Declaration, the presence of the slave trade received the most verbiage.
So for Lincoln to have earned your respect he would have observed the limitations on federal power over the States and allowed the states to abuse their illegitimate power over some of their population. Again, slavery turned the idea of liberty against itself.
Of course, the slave owning states could have just not thrown a hissy fit over what they saw as the writing on the wall and seceded, thus stripping themselves of the protections of the constitution…
Everything I read about Lincoln, even that which is intended as unflattering, paints the picture of a president that walked up the the line of constitutionality, stuck his nose over it, but never a toe.
This is the ‘New America’ that Liberal Democrats and those moderates[Christie!] that think we need to ‘come half way’ or concede to ‘get things done,’ have given us.
Instead of depending on faith, respect and the morality given to us by those simple words the ‘New America’ will rely on the government to administer what is deemed ‘justice.’ It is neither fair or blind.
If you are wealthy or successful or just content because you pay your way and feel lucky enough to have a job and being American is enough….well….too bad! One is not allowed to have or own a thing…..because it is unfair to others less fortunate.
Hope and Change….it is here NOW!
If there was any doubt in your mind , there is a campaign poster of Christi supporting the AWB in the 1990’s.
Ya, as a NJ resident (for now, anyway) there’s no way I’ll support the BIg Guy’s presidential ambitions. I have a feeling not a lot of other people will, either.
That being said, he did veto some nasty new laws a year or so ago. Given that the state legislature is essentially one party rule, and will remain so for the foreseeable future, that’s as good as it’ll get in NJ for quite some time. So, credit where it’s due.
Wait until Gov Fullop enacts new controls to make NJ #1 in firearm rights trampling again…
Just wait until 2016, when the idiots in NJ elect a super left wing, liberal, anti-gun Democrat as governor. EVERYONE in NJ will be lamenting the “Good old days” of the Christie administration. BIG tax increases, Major new anti-gun legislation, Companies and taxpayers abandoning the state in droves, leading to another large decrease in real estate values and an increase in foreclosures and abandonments. I pity the pro-gun, conservatives stuck there (yes, there ARE a lot of them, they are just outnumbered by libs) due to job and family concerns. Most people can’t just “pick-up and leave”, no matter how bad they want to.
Aww, that’s adorable. You believe the gangsters in New Jersey actually allow the people’s votes to count.
And we are worried about Zombies! One is fake. One is REAL!
Tragically, the answer is that the Slave States can’t free themselves. The Won’t-Issue States are too diseased by hoplophobia to change from within. Instead, because of their failing economies, their hoplophobes will emigrate to the heretofore Free States to turn them purple and then blue.
Those of us who live in Free States must VOTE and demand that our Congress-critters PASS Pro-Gun legislation; most importantly (IMO) National Reciprocity. Gradually, the voters in the Won’t-Issue States will become inoculated to the idea that citizens have a right to both keep and bear arms. In a decade or so they will accept the 2A as a legitimate civil right.
Conservative and libertarian gun-owners who sat-out the last 2 presidential elections are as responsible for Obama’s election and re-election as were the liberals/Progressives. They could not bring themselves to hold their noses and cast a ballot for the lesser of two evils. America will be exceedingly lucky if it survives its 44’th President.
We need to back the best Republican candidate that could be elected; then, we have to win the general election. If we fail a third time then we had all better keep our powder dry.
These next few quarters are critical. We need to communicate to our RINOs that we have had enough of them. If they don’t pass bills with veto-overriding majorities then we will “primary” them. We must be prepared to replace a RINO with a Democrat; for if we won’t call the RINOs’ bluff, we will governed by Democrat-Lites or Democrats-per-se.
“We must be prepared to replace a RINO with a Democrat; for if we won’t call the RINOs’ bluff, we will governed by Democrat-Lites or Democrats-per-se.”
The problem is that RINO’s and Democrats are statists. Both believe that government, in all ways, should dominate the individual. At best they have slightly different agendas but they have much more in common ideologically and culturally than they have differences. Both regard libertarian/conservatism with contempt. They are not fans of personal liberty and freedom if those values compete with statist agendas. There isn’t, for instance, all that much difference politically between Jeb Bush and Hillary. His brother’s “compassionate conservatism” was simply a typical statist, liberal expand-government-at-all-costs agenda dressed up with a shuck-and-jive new name. The differences between RINO’s and liberals is so small that, in terms of governance, they’ll be quite similar, regardless of what party label they wear. If that’s the case, why bother to vote?
OK, so here’s the proposition. We have an incumbent Robert RINO. He is going up against the Democrat candidate Blue Dog. But before the general election Robert has to be nominated and he has 1+ opponents Larry-Libertarian and Chuck-Conservative.
What do we do? Sit on our hands?
Robert RINO will tell us to sit on our hands. He will tell us that, as a RINO he is Democrat-Lite; definitely better than his pseudo-Blue-Dog Democrat challenger. Robert will tell us that neither Larry nor Chuck has a chance. Robert’s strategy is to keep us sitting on our hands.
Do we fall for Robert’s play?
If we get behind either Larry or Chuck we make Robert pay for his primary. Funds he spends on winning the primary won’t be there to fight against the Democrat opponent. If we are really lucky, either Larry or Chuck will beat Robert the RINO. But, our better Republican might still lose to Blue-Dog the Democrat. Robert RINO might prevail over Larry and Chuck and then lose to Blue-Dog the Democrat. This is what Robert wants us to believe. If we sit on our hands, Robert RINO wins; or, at least has a better chance at beating the Democrat.
So, we get intimidated or discouraged. We abandon the field and let Robert RINO and Blue-Dog fight it out. Heads we lose; tails we lose even worse.
I argue that the smart thing to do is to “primary” Robert RINO so that he feels the threat of our Libertarian or Conservative votes. I have no illusion that Robert will have an epiphany. He is a lost soul and will dance to whatever tune is required to win his election. As a Representative, he has to go through this process every two years. Sooner or later, he will lose to the Democrat opponent.
Robert RINO will – eventually – get the idea that he had better keep his head down and not attract the opposition of Libertarians or Conservatives. It’s either that; or, lose to the Democrat.
My strategy won’t necessarily work in MY Congressional district (or in MY State in Senate races.) My RINO may be too deeply entrenched. Or, there may be no Libertarian or Conservative who will run an effective campaign. That’s fine; there are hundreds of other Congressional districts and 49 States where I can-NOT vote. I can search through them looking for competitive races and competitive primary opponents. Give those primary opponents $10 or $100 and collectively, we can pose a real threat to the RINOs they are running against.
We don’t have to win the first time or second time we target a particular RINO incumbent. We will ware him down and put the fear of God in him. The message will spread. Every RINO is looking over his right shoulder at potential primary opponents and over his left shoulder at his Democrat opponent.
Even if we lose EVERY TIME we will send a message to RINOs and to Blue-Dog Democrats. Some of those Blue-Dogs are going to start looking at their own votes trying to figure out how to court a few Libertarian or Conservative voters. It’s not hard to flip a Democrat from a gun-owning State to back a 2A position.
What is the alternative strategy? Let the Progressives, Liberals, Democrats control the House, Senate, President and Judiciary? Accelerate the plunge into the abyss hoping that the general population will realize we are on a fast-train to hell? OK, that might work; but which strategy is safer for the Republic?
And the people said amen!
We have to primary these GOP statists every single time. Even if there’s little chance of beating them, we need to put the fear in them so they act like conservatives and not 90’s democrats.
It’s all for naught if we can’t fix our educational system and purge if of statist ideology.
+1000.
This is why we need federal preemption of all local and state gun laws. As far as I am concerned every person responsible for this travesty is guilty of treason.
I’d argue that we have preemption higher than federal. If they flaunt the clear language of the, Constitution what’s one more law?
If only they did flaunt the clear language of the constitution, then more people would be aware of that language.
You meant “flout.”
http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/flaunt-flout/
pwrserge,
We already have pre-emption — it is the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The root problem is that government is not interested in limiting itself. That is up to us. And thus far, we have failed to act.
I have written a likely solution on comments to other articles on The Truth about Guns. And it doesn’t even involve breaking any laws. And no one jumps on board.
Here is the solution:
Let us assume that 1 million out of the 9 million people in New Jersey own firearms. If just 1 in 10 of those firearms owners dedicated themselves to exercising their First Amendment rights to maximum effect, the New Jersey legislature would repeal all of their unconstitutional firearms laws so fast it would make your head spin. How would that work you ask? Simple. All 100,000 people write and send an old fashioned paper letter every day to their politicians. They also send an e-mail every day to their politicians. Finally, they call their politicians every day. And all three communications have the same message: constituents demanding that the New Jersey government repeal all of their unconstitutional firearm laws.
Think about it. This would quite literally bring New Jersey government to a screeching halt. Imagine legislators and the governor receiving 100,000 letters every day, 100,000 e-mails every day, and 100,000 phone calls every day. Keep this up for four weeks. The investment of time would be only a few minutes each day for each of the 100,000 constituents. These constituents would quite literally bury the office of each politician with letters in envelopes. Their voicemail boxes would be maxed and their phones would be busy continuously. And their e-mail in boxes would become unmanageable. Remember, a handful of staffers for each politician would be trying to handle 300,000 queries every day — an obviously impossible task. And, more importantly, buried somewhere within those 300,000 queries every day, would be other queries of importance to those politicians that would get lost in shuffle — queries that, if they fail to respond, could cost them their elections.
What choice would New Jersey politicians have other than to repeal the laws immediately? All this could happen without any violence whatsoever. And if the politicians stubbornly stick with the status quo anyway, then descend on Trenton with a physical demonstration of all 100,000 people. I just don’t see how the New Jersey politicians could go forward without repealing the laws.
Pro tip: scale this up by a factor of four for California’s larger population and imagine that nightmare for California pols — that would be about 1 million queries per day for staffers of each politician.
There’s just one slightly enormous flaw in your plan:
ppl don’t no how 2 rite letrz no more. if dey cant txt it, dey aint gonna snd it.
I find it amusing when anti’s point to places like NJ and NYC as models for what
common sense gun safetygun control laws should be at a national level (usually in the same breath as “I support the second amendment, but….” ). Of course the duplicity in actions over words continues with attempts by anti’s in those locations to push for even more controls while telling us we’re being paranoid and unreasonable.I feel very sorry for Mr. Aitken. I feel even worse for his son who is probably being told regularly the reason that he can’t see his father is because he did something “really bad” and is a dangerous felon. I hope the story ends with this man having a meaningful relationship with his son. I suspect the son will be an adult when it happens.
I read through everything I could find online in short order and I was resisting posting this question, but have to ask. Who did this guy piss off? Who has enough power to rail road an otherwise law abiding citizen to this degree? Was the vindictive wife the daughter of a police chief, judge, or prominent politician? I just ordered the book to find out.
What industry feeds on law-abiding citizens? The industry of intervention employed by local, state, & federal governments with an increasing regularity. Why solve a problem when ink on paper cost the least…which impedes, infringes, & impresses on citizens rights & liberties. Without great effort to limit the scope & power of government we’ll drown in help not requested.
I read the book this afternoon instead taking care of some stuff around the house. I was only tangentially aware of the story before. If you are a gun owner and love rightful liberty, read the book, it will leave you feeling enraged on a couple of fronts.
Mr. Aitken’s was arrested after an illegal search for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, which even the state admitted during his case he owned legally. The state’s case was based on where he was going and why but didn’t allow the jury to hear the exceptions to the NJ transport laws which certainly would have allowed some doubt to creep into the state’s case. It seems odd to me that neither side used GPS cellphone data as part of the case from what I’ve read. No matter how you cut it he was railroaded by an ignorant anti-gun cop(s), prosecutors, and an activist judge.
Scary stuff.
I call it Soviet Jersey to tease my New Jersey coworkers (we work, and I live, in Pennsylvania).
Several of them are considering moving because of Jersey’s gun laws.
My neighbors/good friends just bought a house in W. Cape May, and plan on retiring there in the near future. I always tell them i could never move to Jersey because of the progressive pols. I believe they will live to regret their decision purely for tax reasons, but the personal liberty thing is something I can’t get across to them because they haven’t been personally affected yet. YET!
My wife is from NJ. Her family keeps asking her, “When are you going to move back east?” My family has done the same to me (in the annoying way of thinking the only place to live is the Tri-State area). Both her and I tried to be nice when first asked that question. Now we are fairly blunt about not moving back and the long list of reasons why. That question has all but stopped… finally.
I’ll never step foot in NJ again. Nor will I spend money with any company based there. NJ is not part of America, as far as I’m concerned. It is a hostile nation.
It really is a shame, because some of my fondest memories are of fishing on the Delaware Bay.
Are these part of the liberal “comon sense gun laws”?
The ex-wife needs her Right to Speak taken away for a period equal to what she initiated against this man.
If you are a gun owner you should have an attorney’s number memorized. You should learn phrases like “am I being detained?”, “am I under arrest?”, and “I would like to speak to my attorney .”
Better yet, find an attorney, spend one to two hundred dollars so you can talk with him for an hour about “what ifs” and already be an existing client.
For all the money we spend on guns, ammo, range bags, range time, etc., another couple of hundred is cheap insurance compared to what this poor guy has been through.
And no I am not an attorney. Just old enough to know the value of good attorneys and accountants.
.Agreed. Nor I an attorney but I’ve spent hundreds of hours dealing with attorneys. Been deposed twice; would never want to go through a deposition without a good advocate present.
No gun owner living in a guns-hostile State (NJ, NY, MA, CT, RI, MD, CA) dare ignore this advice. In NJ an attorney – Evan Nappan – gives an excellent course and publishes a book titled NJ Gun Law. Those in other gun-hostile states should seek-out a gun-expert attorney practicing in that state.
And how is it that someone with so little regard for a fundamental, constitutionally protected civil right is even considered a viable candidate for the most important job in the world?
If you are addressing Gov. Fatso, I’d have to say that he’s not a viable candidate. Gabriel Iglesias has a better chance of becoming President.
“And how is it that someone with so little regard for a fundamental, constitutionally protected civil right is even considered a viable candidate for the most important job in the world?”
Yeah, who still considers Christie to be a viable candidate? The mainstream media? Anyone who has the slightest understanding of American politics knows he’s a joke with about as much chance at the presidency as my cat.
he’s a joke with about as much chance at the presidency as my cat
Actually, I’d prefer your cat.
“Yes they break down our ways!”
“Their theories twist facts, present the doer of evil as a harmless fellow, and the honest man who does his duty as some kind of fiend. They make the average person uncertain where to turn. He is hag-ridden by all their conflicting subtleties and false guides. I tell you, these New Jersey voters need straightening out!
I for one will work to not elect Christie or anyone else that will not support the Consitution!
“And how is it that someone with so little regard for a fundamental, constitutionally protected civil right is even considered a viable candidate for the most important job in the world?”
Actually the garbage man has the most important job in the world…
In my experience, far too many gun owners are stuck watching the lumbering colossus that is California while paying zero attention to NJ slithering beneath the mangroves. This is most likely because some decades ago, the NRA deemed the state a lost cause. Don’t get me wrong, California gun laws suck, but there are three key distinctions that I swear almost make it seem preferable. Only my current and former fellow NJ subjects will truly understand what I mean:
1. Were I a California resident today, I could walk into any gun store and buy a firearm. Yes, the handgun roster, post-Newtown long gun registry, bullet buttons, etc. do balance the scale of awful, but the fact is that as a California resident I could still walk into a store with cash and a driver’s license, buy a firearm, and pick it up after the waiting period. Whereas I had to go through a five month wild goose chase to obtain a license from my local PD just to buy a gun, any gun, as an NJ resident. This process varies in time and required application steps depending on what county you live in, by the way, sort of like what CA residents go through with concealed carry permits. Speaking of which…
2. If you live in the right part of California, you can get a concealed carry permit. Unless you are friends with a judge, politician, or are a retired cop in NJ, you won’t, ever. I have heard stories of both men and women who were denied concealed carry permits because their “justifiable need” of having been beaten to within an inch of their lives by thugs in public apparently wasn’t good enough. Open carry of any kind outside of hunting season that’s not on your property is forbidden, and I still wouldn’t be dumb enough to pick weeds in the front yard with my K98k slung over my back because before the end of the day, the cops absolutely would be called. Self defense laws inside and outside the home? Forget it. I once had a retired cop who wised up and moved to Florida tell me I’d be legally better off breaking my legs from a two story fall and running into the woods than ever firing a gun at an intruder, no matter how heinous his crimes.
3. Transport laws, and this is the big one. In many of the anti states, and even some free ones, it’s required that a gun be unloaded or in a case of some kind whenever it is in your car. However, I know of no other state that takes an activity like going out to lunch, picking a friend up at home, or dropping by the gas station, and criminalizes it with a felony if guns are involved as NJ does. The way the law reads, if you are not going directly to or from a gun range, gun store, or hunting trip, even if you have an FID card and the gun is stored properly, you’re committing a felony. Of course “necessary deviations” are allowed, but that’s just lip service. The scariest thing about this law is that, to my knowledge, nobody has been prosecuted for it and yet it still lurks there. There was a recent bill that would have cleared up the legal ambiguity immensely, but it also had a mag cap reduction from 15 to 10 tacked on and Christie opted for a veto anyway. To my knowledge, California’s transport laws are nowhere near this strict.
Make no mistake folks, NJ is the template for what the statists and their useful idiots want the rest of the country to be, run by laws that literally push gun owners to the margins of society and shame them while simultaneously persuading others from ever wanting to exercise their rights. My friends and I joke that when walking into an NJ gun store, you feel like everyone just watched you enter a porno theater or strip club. And the sad thing is, we’re probably more alienated than the clientele of those sorts of establishments any day of the week.
Where are all the big government people who comment now? This is government. They tried to put this man in prison for 7 years after he committed no crime at all.
Stories like these are why I don’t want to stay in my slave state of ca. It’s not good to leave the fight and take my pro gun vote to AZ but it’s not worth staying here. Too many stories of good legal gun owners having their lives ruined over moronic laws.
Thats my plan B, when the kids are through school, and retired mil.pay kicks in.
Plan A is continue to fight in the only practical way, contribute to Calguns, SAF, and NRA to litigate, and educate moderate non-gun owners on their civil rights to freedom, one by one, in reasonable fact based conversation, and trips to the range.
I’m pretty sure CA in Democrat super-majority state legislature, Governor, and 2/3 Dem appointed judges to the Ninth, is in an increasing fiscal decline that will only be further accelerated by progressive policies, regs, taxes (already 2nd worst in US), and costs of state employees, law enforcement, and rising crime, can only go one way…Detroit. If it were an independent country it would be a banana state, crashing ujder a corrupt socialisg regime. However, since the Fed.Gov runs a shell game with nationwide taxes, being funneled to welfare states, via ACA subsidies, education subsidies for Common Core, and other takings, via executive action, EPA, DOE, HUD, welfare/disability payments, which disquise the fundamental unsustainability of CA, the State will muddle along another decade.
History shows that socialist models can go a long time, with top down deception, but when they crack (think perestroika, Berlin Wall) is when enough of the LIVs wake up, and the producfive middle has emigrated.
It can get downright dangerous in many neighborhoods, and larger scale disruptions will follow quickly after basic food shortages, and/or other must haves, power, water. Californias power grid is extremely fragile, and if the drought continues a couple more years, it will only take a black swan, like a major earthquake dropping most freeway overpasses, water transport, and electricity for a three day+ stretch in a major metro…say, LA, to demonstrate the need for citizen self protection.
Thats why, even if we cant get legal CCW, we need to be skilled and drilled to carry effectively, sholuld that time come early, and in the meantime, obey the silly laws carefully, to avoid being deprived of ownership, by a dumb$hit move or slip up, for its Murphys Law it will happen then.
nj ? what a dump. the gun owners need a good lawyer, with time and money, and a lot of friends, with money to back him. sue the hell out of n.j. for all of the unconstitutional laws they have about guns. all gun owners in that dump need to move out if the can and tell there friends not to go there as well.
Got out of there years back. As liberal as it was then(think Mcgreevy era) it wasn’t near as bad as it is now. We all used to carry a shotgun, cased and unloaded of course, in our trucks all the time. As long as we had a hunting license, something was always in season. Pretty much always had a handgun in the console also. Most of the police were old school and didn’t have to worry too much about them trying to make brownie points. Plus living in the pinelands helped. Family wants me to move back, think the closest I’d get is Delaware. even if I did, I’d leave my weapons outside of state with friends until I re-established residency, then bring them home and tell no one. The hell with getting a new fid. Hmm, wonder if the one I got 40 years ago still works?
Just for sh8ts & giggles, I still email the legislature every now and then telling them I’m not coming back till they change the gun laws!
New Jersey is a dump. Been there, seen that.
I’m so glad to be out of that state. They’ve had 5 legally owned guns used in killings in 50 years and thats reason enough to ban all guns. They ignore the millions of crimes committed by illegally owned guns,
“Kiss it where it smells, take it to New Jersey.”