NEWARK — Citing a new reality brought on by the 9/11 attacks, a judge in Newark Thursday denied a request by a Linden man to have his gun collection returned, a year after it was confiscated following his arrest for threatening to shoot President Obama.

"Unfortunately, this time in our lives, we live in a different world. If this incident occurred before 9/11 ... the result may have been different," Superior Court Judge Joseph Cassini III told John Brek.

Brek, a security guard at Newark Liberty International Airport, was arrested Oct. 22, 2009, after two Continental Airlines employees alerted police to alleged comments Brek made at an airport lunch truck about cutting a hole in a fence so he could shoot the president.

Obama arrived at Newark Liberty aboard Air Force One the next day.

Authorities searched Brek’s home, where they confiscated 43 guns — all but one licensed — and hollow-point bullets. An avid hunter, Brek said the weapon collection, including a bow and arrow and hunting knives, had belonged to his grandfather and his father.

Cassini acknowledged that "Mr. Brek doesn’t pose any threat," and agreed to dissolve a restraining order that prohibited him from having any contact with the president or the White House.

Brek, who attended Thursday’s hour-long hearing with his attorney, Moses Rambarran, was clearly disappointed with the ruling. The collection, he said afterward, has sentimental value.

"I can visit the White House, but I can’t get my guns back," Brek said.

Delivering his decision two days before the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the judge cautioned, "we don’t engage in conduct that can be interpreted as threats to elected officials and citizens. The public health, safety and welfare... that trumps everything."

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Originally charged with making terroristic threats, and possessing a stolen rifle and hollow-point bullets, Brek pleaded guilty in November to two lesser counts of harassment. Authorities have long since dropped the most serious charges.

Rambarran said he will appeal Thursday’s ruling.

"There is no legal basis for the denial of the return of his property. Mr. Brek was found not guilty of all of the original charges and the judge deemed him not to be a threat to society," he said.

Essex County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Keith Harvest conceded, "we did not see this as a major threat or we’d be in federal court." Still, he told the judge, "based on the totality, we don’t think it’s appropriate to give him his weapons back."

Cassini’s ruling may be constitutionally fraught, according to one legal expert, citing the 2nd Amendment’s right to bear arms, and a clause in the 5th Amendment that prevents private property from being "taken for public use, without just compensation."

A person loses his 2nd Amendment rights if he has committed a felony, a violent misdemeanor or has a restraining order involving a domestic violence incident, said Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law. In Brek’s case, "the judge did not even find that the person was a threat, so I don’t see how he can deny him of his 2nd Amendment rights simply because of a worry."

Last month, a Superior Court judge in Morristown ruled that a blind Rockaway Township man who accidentally shot himself while cleaning a weapon could keep his gun collection.

Police seized the weapons from Steven Hopler’s home in January 2009, while investigating a burglary that occurred at his home while he was in the hospital, recuperating from the accidental shooting. A tenant in his two-family home was accused of stealing a dozen guns from Hopler, and authorities seized the remaining six, then sought to permanently confiscate them, claiming he had left them unsecured in the house, and had negligently shot himself.