The governor didn’t take questions at his announcement about new Motor Vehicle Commission initiatives in Randolph. But later in the day he conditionally vetoed two gun control measures. NJTV News Correspondent David Cruz discussed the action with Anchor Mary Alice Williams.

Williams: So you didn’t get to ask him about two significant vetoes of gun bills.

Cruz: Yeah, Mary Alice. And those actually came after so he wouldn’t have answered any questions about them anyway. There are two bills. One is Senate bill 816, which establishes a commission that would have eventually led to a mandate for gun shops to sell so-called smart guns, or as they’re called also, personalized handguns. And so the governor is not one who’s cool on regulations, particularly as it pertains to business and he said that if there was real calls for these guns that the marketplace would then make them available. There was another bill also, Senate bill 2165, and that concerns the justifiable need standard of the state laws regarding the concealed carry permits. As it stands now, if you want to get a concealed carry permit, you have to show your local chief and a superior court judge that there is an urgent necessity for you to have a concealed carry permit.

Williams: A justifiable need.

Cruz: Yeah, essentially if you’ve been the victim of an attack, you think an attack is imminent or you’re in danger in some way, your job requires you to be in danger. Those kinds of things are required now. What the governor’s conditional veto did is it made New Jersey a shall issue state, which puts it in line with about 40 other states. And that is now, with this conditional veto, that if you can show that you know how to handle a gun and that’s pretty much the standard. You can show that you can handle a gun and there’s no reason for you not to have a gun — you’ve been convicted of certain crimes, you show some domestic violence issues, those kinds of things. Now you can just, if you’re not in that list, then you can get a concealed carry permit.

Williams: Any reaction from the sponsors of those bills?

Cruz: Yeah, these were Democratic-led initiatives. Sen. [Loretta] Weinberg was really the force behind the smart guns and she said that of course this is the governor pitching to the right, which was essentially what all of the Democrats said. Their feeling is that this is the governor showing, re-establishing his conservative bona fides as he’s a large member of the Trump campaign.

Williams: OK, thank you David.

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