Gov. Christie's Town Hall Meeting at FuryaEUs Publick House

Speaking at a New Hampshire town hall last Friday, May 8, 2015, Gov. Chris Christie singled out New Jersey's smart gun law as a defining example of legislative overreach by the Democratically controlled state legislature that's hampered his ability to expand Second Amendment rights. Now the law may be going away, as lawmakers recognize it has been used to prevent the sale of smart guns in other states, lest it trigger New Jersey's mandate that all guns sold in the state be 'smart' within three years of the technology becoming available elsewhere.

(Aristide Economopoulos/NJ Advance Media)

TRENTON — Leading Democratic state lawmakers are seriously considering scrapping New Jersey's longstanding but never-implemented law requiring all handguns sold in the state feature "smart gun" technology that allows only the weapon's owners to fire them, NJ Advance Media has learned.

The lawmakers say they want to replace or change the Childproof Gun Law with a measure that encourages rather than requires gun shops to sell "smart guns" -- and provides economic incentives for Garden State consumers to buy them.

Passed in 2002 to respond to accidental child deaths from guns, the law's mandates for gun sales were supposed to kick in three years after the weapons became available for retail purposes. However, it hasn't resulted in the sale of smart guns and instead moved gun rights activists to intimidate gun shops around the country not to carry them because that would start the countdown clock for the New Jersey law.



"The legislation from a decade ago was designed to stimulate technology. It worked," said state Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D-Camden). "But if that legislation is now having the effect of restricting access to that consumer product, it needs to be reexamined. Because the most important thing is giving consumers the ability to decide if they want that access to that technology."



Greenwald said he had reached out to the law's sponsor, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) and that conversations will be held with the Democratic leadership in both the Assembly and Senate later this week.

Reached by NJ Advance Media, Weinberg confirmed that the talks were starting, saying, "I have been approached by various gun safety people, who I respect, to reach a compromise."



Weinberg, who is also the state Senate majority leader, said she hadn't made up her mind about whether to advocate repealing the law entirely or simply amend it, but acknowledged that "any 12 year old law that was dealing with technology is now akin to a century (in age)."

The law, passed in December 2002, dictated that once smart guns were on the market for three years, it would be illegal for any registered or licensed firearms manufacturer or dealer to sell a handgun in New Jersey unless had this personalized technology.

Speaking in Dover, N.H., at a 2016-themed town hall meeting last week, Gov. Chris Christie had singled out the Childproof Gun Law for special scorn, holding it up as the epitome of Democratic legislative overreach.



Senate majority leader Sen. Loretta Weinberg is considering repealing the 'smart gun' law she authored in 2002, now that it's being used by Second Amendment activists to intimidate gun stores nationwide into not selling smart guns. Under the current N.J. law, once smart guns become available anywhere else in the nation, New Jersey has three years before smart guns become the only type of handgun permitted for sale in the state.

Proponents have said the law was needed to help change the grim fact that guns kill more preschoolers than police officers each year across the nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control's most current data available, 505 people were killed in gun accidents in 2013, 108 of them children.

Opponents of the law said the technology wouldn't work reliably and would compromise the safety of legal gun owners when confronted by armed criminals.

But as manufacturers worked on the technology, the law also sparked some unintended consequences: When gun sellers on both coasts began offering the country's first smart gun, the Armatix iP1, for sale, they were met with an avalanche of hate mail, violent threats and recriminations.



The first gun store to offer the iP1, the Oak Tree Gun Club outside Los Angeles, dropped plans to carry the smart gun last March after a backlash from local members and gun rights activists determined to stop the New Jersey smart gun-only law from being triggered.



Oak Tree's manager became so intimidated, he even went so far as to deny that he ever had offered the Armatix iP1 for sale or even ever planned to sell it, despite having given a previous interview to the Washington Post about his plans to do so.



Last May, a Maryland gun seller, Andy Raymond of Engage Armaments, also dropped plans to sell the smart gun, even going so far as to sleep in his Rockville store, fearing it would be burned down as had been threatened by Second Amendment activists determined to stop the New Jersey smart gun-only law from being triggered.



"In Maryland, there were death threats," said Greenwald. "That's not serving anyone. If this is a product people choose not to have, the market will decide."

Greenwald said that instead of mandating only smart guns be sold, he hoped to provide an economic incentives to boost their sales to accomplish the same end. He noted that New Jersey "had offered a tax credit for early adaptors of solar panels, where you could write off the purchase of some on your taxes. We could offer that same type of opportunity. You could offer forgiveness on the sales tax. It's very early in this, but those are the type of conversations we would certainly look at."

The Armatix gun is not a cheap firearm. Its base .22 calibre model is priced at more than $1,400, almost a $900 more than a comparable non-RFID handgun.



Still, says Greenwald, many consumers who might not otherwise purchase a handgun out of concern for the safety of their children might pay more for a gun that guaranteed it.



"As a consumer, I would choose that," he said.



Rabbi Joel Mosbacher of the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a community-organizing group, said that he had met with Weinberg and urged her to consider scrapping the 2002 smart gun law in favor of one that let the free market determine the smart gun's fate.



"She's been a leader on this and we think it says a lot that she'd be willing to reevaluate," said Mosbacher.



Mossbacher believes the smart gun technology is so superior that most consumers would eventually to embrace it the same way that they did airbags and anti-lock brakes on cars. But instead of arguing for mandating the smart gun's use, he says he wants the state's largest purchasers of firearms to reach that decision on their own.



"Law enforcement is best-placed to assess the state of the art," said Mosbacher, "Our police and our military are some of the biggest purchasers of weapons, and we hope to use that purchasing power to press gunmakers directly (to begin offering smart guns)."



Metro IAF and will be hosting a smart gun trade show in New Rochelle, N.Y., later this month so that New York and New Jersey mayors and law enforcement officials can try out smart guns from manufacturers like Armatix, iGun Technology Corp. and SAR, who'll be on hand to answer questions. Armatix is readying a 9 mm version of its gun, aimed at serving the needs of law enforcement and citizens seeking home protection.



"Citizens tend to want what the police want," said Mossbacher, "That's how Glock became one of the most popular gunmakers in America."



Weinberg said that whatever form the new smart gun legislation takes, "The intent is what the intent was when we passed the bill: Furthering the development of the technology and making sure that those who purchase handguns have the safest possible product in the marketplace to prevent children from getting killed accidentally, and to prevent bad guys who might want to steal guns from getting them. I am still committed to those two goals."

The DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that an average of 232,400 firearms are stolen each year, based on data from 2005 through 2010. Eighty percent are never recovered.

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and NJ Million Mom March announce lawsuit 6 Gallery: Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and NJ Million Mom March announce lawsuit

MORE POLITICS

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com

