TRENTON -- The state Assembly on Thursday failed to override Gov. Chris Christie's veto of a gun control measure supported by advocates for domestic violence victims and former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Democrats in the lower house of the state Legislature failed to muster Republican support for the bill (A4218), which would have tightened New Jersey's law restricting access to firearms by convicted domestic abusers and those subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

The vote was 49-29 -- five votes short of what is needed for an override.

Republican lawmakers speaking before the vote advocated for bringing it in line with Christie's conditional veto message, which recommended measures that would toughen punishment for domestic abusers and make it easier for victims to obtain firearms of their own.

But Assemblywoman Gabriela Mosquera (D-Gloucester), a lead sponsor who said she was herself a victim of childhood domestic violence, said Christie's recommendations "do not accomplish the task at hand."

"This is nothing short of an utter disgrace," she said after the vote, which followed another failed override for a gun control measure.

Under the proposed measure, judges would have been required to order the offenders to turn over their weapons to law enforcement within 24 hours, or sell them. Advocates for the bill said the law needed a better enforcement mechanism, and Giffords, who survived a shooting four years ago, came to New Jersey to support the measure.

The failed override was one of several recent attempts by Democrats in the Legislature to circumvent one of Christie's vetoes while the governor is out on the campaign trail seeking the Republican nomination for president.

Republican lawmakers who spoke against the override said the measure was duplicative and accused Democrats of fighting Christie's veto on strictly partisan grounds rather than implementing his recommendations.

"This is politics," said Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz (R-Union). "There's nothing in the bill that does anything to protect the victims of domestic violence. The conditional veto does."

But domestic abuse victims advocates, some of whom came to Trenton for the vote, claim the governor's recommendations, including increasing victims' access to firearms, would not make them more safe. Kristen Wald, a board member for Start Out Fresh Intervention Advocates, or S.O.F.I.A., said the measure's defeat makes it harder to bring consistency to the state's system for removing firearms from the homes of abusers, which can vary by county.

"We need that to be a uniform system, and it's not," she said.

S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.