Gun Stories of the Week: New Jersey’s ‘Smart Gun’ Law Foiled For Now

For last week’s installment, click here.

**TOP STORY
Anti-gunners say ‘traditional’ Black Friday firearms sales spurred by Ferguson fears **

The federal background check system nearly set a single-day record with more than 175,000 background checks—an average of almost three per second, nearly three times the daily average—on Black Friday, according to the FBI.

It marks the second time in three years that a new record for single-day FBI background checks was established on a Black Friday and the third Black Friday to crack the top 10 in single-day background check volume since the system was established in 1998. All 10 top-volume days have occurred since 2012.

The highest background check day on record is Dec. 21, 2012, with more than 177,000 checks. The previous Black Friday record was 153,697 set in 2012. Last year’s Black Friday tally was 144,758 background checks performed.

“Traditionally, Black Friday is one of our busiest days for transaction volume,” FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer told the Associated Press.

Despite this well-established trend in booming November and December firearms sales, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford offered this childish, ignorant Dec. 4 rant-analysis of why gun sales spiked this year on Black Friday (the way they do every year):

“The scary black president! He’s part of the problem, no? He’s one of them, the real reason so many people bought a gun this holiday,” Morford writes. “According to at least one shopowner, a large percentage of gun buyers mentioned one singular event as a motivating factor for their purchase. Can you guess? That’s right: Ferguson.”

Once again, my fellow 90 million American gun owners, you’ve been stereotyped by a stereotype who doesn’t understand how much of a stereotype he is—not to mention, how bad journalist a he is by casting aspersions against one-third of his fellow citizens based on what “at least one shopowner” said to somebody somewhere at sometime.

Robert Farago, in a Dec. 4 Truthaboutguns.com blog, said in addition to a two-decade trend in spiking firearms sales during the holiday shopping season —duh—Morford also ignores the fact “that firearms prices have cratered … Never underestimate the general public’s ability to sniff out a bargain.”

Unfortunately, facts and figures will never be of use to elitist cliché-mongers such as Morford.

“Morford’s underlying theme is the same one we encounter every single time gun control advocates get their dander up,” Faragol writes. “Gun owners are emotionally immature, intellectually ignorant provincials. Gun control advocates are smarter, wiser, more sophisticated and emotionally stable. Therefore the anti-gun elite must force gun owners to do the right thing: give up their guns. For their own good. And that of society as a whole.”

Unfortunately for Morford and others of his cloistered urban ilk, the more they chatter and chirp, the more they are exposed as flighty flibbertigibbets better suited for celebrity gossip and cute pet stories than discussing serious, sober adult topics.

“As for Morford,” Farago concludes, “I refer him to Mark Twain. ‘It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.’”

For more, go to:

Gun sales boom on Black Friday with almost three background checks per second

Black Friday is America’s premier gun-buying day

Paranoid racists spur Black Friday gun sales surge. Allegedly.

Scared white guys spur Black Friday gun sales to record high

Liberal columnist: Black Friday gun sales fueled by ‘Scared White Guys’

Ferguson protests influence Black Friday gun sales

EXPOSING THE ENEMY
Bamboozleberg Express extends anti-gun efforts to 20 states

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s front group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has a $50 million 2016 election-year war chest pledge from Moneybags Bamboozleberg himself, but it will also be pitching big bucks in state legislatures around the nation in 2015.

According to the USA Today, after spending $12.1 million on 2014 election battles—successfully financing the anti-gun Washington ballot initiative and winning legislative contests in Colorado and Oregon—Everytown is backing legislation in 20 states that would either expand background checks, ban domestic abusers from legal gun ownership, or give family members the power to seek court orders to confiscate firearms from people they fear may commit gun violence.

“The goal in some of the states is the same kind of initiative that Bloomberg and other one-percenters pushed through in Washington,” wrote AWR Hawkins in a Dec. 2 Brietbart.com blog. “While in others, the goal is to pressure legislators to support gun control expansion under the guise of fighting domestic violence or by following California’s lead with ‘gun violence restraining orders.'”

The immediate priority for Bloomberg’s lackeys is an initiative campaign by Nevadans for State Gun Rights seeking enough signatures on a petition demanding universal background checks on all transactions (see related story below). Everytown is also eyeing similar background check initiative campaigns in Maine and Arizona.

“As one of the most gun-friendly states in the union, Arizona will be a challenge for Bloomberg,” Hawkins writes. “And voters in Maine just passed on the chance to put a gun control governor in office, choosing instead to stick with pro-gun, NRA-endorsed Governor Paul LePage.”

Obviously, he adds, part of Bloomberg’s strategy “is going around elected officials—bypassing legislatures and governors.”

“They have come up with a strategy that seems to be working so far,” Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at State University of New York-Cortland and an expert on gun politics, told USA Today. “For the first time in gun-politics history, the NRA is being outspent by the pro-gun control forces.”

While acknowledging it has “$38 billion reasons”—Bloomberg’s estimated personal worth—to fear Bamboozleberg, the NRA dismisses Everytown’s perceived success as smoke-and-mirrors.

In addition to financing more losing than winning campaigns in November, NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said Everytown’s “approach is to go into states where it’s easy to pass something and claim national momentum.”

**For more, go to: **

Michael Bloomberg targets 12 more states for gun control

Fresh off wins, Bloomberg-backed gun group eyes future battles

Bloomberg gun-control group targets more than 12 states

Gun control group attempts shaming VT into background checks for mentally ill

LEGISLATION ROUNDUP
Gunowners challenge signatures on Nevada petition drive

Nevadans for State Gun Rights on Dec. 4 asked Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller to throw out signatures collected by gun-control zealots –including by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ‘Everytown for Gun Safety’ front group — to derail a petition drive geared to place an expanded background check on the 2016 ballot.

According to the Associated Press, the gun rights group is questioning some of the 246,674 signatures collected and submitted to officials in November. Anti-gun prohibitionists needed to obtain 101,667 validated signatures by Nov. 11, including at least 25,417 signatures from each of the four state Petition Districts.

Nevadans for State Gun Rights claims that some of the signatures for the background check initiative were filed a day late in addition to alleging other irregularities.

“Per Nevada law, there is a very strict procedure for submitting ballot initiative signatures, and the records show that the proponents of the initiative petition did not follow the requirements of the law,” NSGR President Don Turner told This Is Reno.

Turner said petitioners had until Nov. 12 to submit their signatures for validation by county clerks in the state. In at least one county, they were not submitted until the day after. Further, Turner said, there are instances of missing affidavits and signatures are dated in some cases after the affidavit was signed — all of which the group feels is sufficient to cause the invalidation of the petition.

The Nevada campaign was launched even before Initiative 594, the 18-page gun control measure in Washington, was passed Nov. 4.

For more, go to:

Gun sales sizzle; antis upset over Nevada challenge

Nevada group asks gun control signatures be rejected because requirements missed

[Despite call for repeal, Hogan plans to keep Marlyand gun laws](http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/ article_f93d9482-7b3c-11e4-88dc-17e2902ecb9d.html)

Texas lawmaker’s bill would make any federal gun control laws unenforceable in the state

South Carolina bills seek to nullify all federal gun control measures

Stand your ground expected to stay out Ohio Senate gun bill

Outlook Connecticut: More anti-gun legislation courtesy of Dan Malloy

Gun bill amended to exempt active military members from conceal carry permitting law

Wisconsin gun laws provide interesting case nationally

Texas lawmaker files ‘Pop Tart gun’ bill

D.C. Council advances permanent gun bill regulating concealed carry

LITIGATION ROUNDUP
New Jersey’s dumb ‘smart gun’ law foiled

New Jersey Attorney General John Jay Hoffman’s Dec. 1 finding that the Armatix iP1 pistol—a German-designed “smart gun” designed to work only when paired with an accompanying wristwatch—does not fit the state’s definition of a “personalized gun,” is a big victory for gun rights advocates and gun manufacturers.

In 2002, New Jersey passed a bizarre, fantasyland law saying that three years after the “smart gun” technology becomes available to prevent a gun from being used by an unauthorized person, only such personalized handguns with “smart gun” technology will be allowed to be sold in the state.

Under the law, the New Jersey attorney general is obliged every six months to inquire whether such “smart gun” firearms are available, and report back to the governor and state legislature.

The iP1, a gun made by Armatix, only works when within 10 inches of an accompanying wristwatch. It went on sale in California and Maryland earlier this year and gun-control zealots took notice. In May, two groups—the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and a New Jersey chapter of the Million Mom March—sued the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, hoping to force it to certify the iP1 as a “personalized gun” and enforce the state’s silly “smart gun” law.

Fortunately, Hoffman found that under the law, a “personalized gun” is one that “may only be fired by an authorized or recognized user.” The iP1 doesn’t meet that criterion, Hoffman found.

Nevertheless, Brady Bunch attorney Rob Wilcox told the Associated Press that he’s pleased with the time-sucking, albeit failed, lawsuit. “We view this as a complete victory,” he said. “We got the attorney general to respond.”

For more, go to:

Unusual New Jersey firearm law doesn’t apply to ‘Smart Gun,’ AG finds

Armatix iP1 pistol

Gun that can only be fired by owner exists but no one will sell it because of New Jersey