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The fatal stabbing of Carol Bowne by an ex-boyfriend, Michael Eitel, has become a cause celebre for guns rights advocates and presidential candidates.

Chris Christie and guns continue to be a lethal rhetorical combination, the kind of noise you should avoid by ducking under a table the moment he begins to flaunt his heat-packin' bonafides.

The latest example came Tuesday in New Hampshire, where he conflated a Berlin Township woman's murder with our gun control laws, and placed the responsibility of both the tragedy and the laws at the feet of Democrats in the legislature.

"They're going to have to answer for these things," he said. "The Carol Bowne situation is going to force more conversation in our state."

He got that second part right, anyway.

Start with this: Nothing in New Jersey's law should have stood in the way of this woman getting the protection she needed. The law is strict, yes, but it allows for victims of domestic abuse to apply and receive a pistol permit within 30 days.

The problem in Bowne's tragic case was not the law, but in the lethargic execution of the law - which means if anyone is to blame, it would be the executive in charge of law enforcement, better known as the Governor of New Jersey.

Editorial:

Christie lies again, this time on guns

Sure, this is the campaign-variety bleating, which candidates use to engage the audience in consensual hallucination as they politicize a tragedy.

But if Christie were honest about this issue, he would recognize the Bowne case as a horrible system failure, and no matter how much he'd like to disown it, it's Christie's system.

When Bowne's ex-boyfriend started making threats, she applied for a pistol permit on April 21. If the system had worked, she would have been approved within 30 days by the Berlin Township Police, because that should be enough time to review forms, perform background checks for criminal history and mental health, and take fingerprints and character references.

Yet 42 days later, Bowne was weaponless, and dead - ambushed on her own driveway near midnight, though it's unlikely she would have had any gun in her possession without a carry permit.

Maybe Christie wants you to think that some Assemblyman from Hudson County made all this happen, but the license application was entirely in the hands of the local police.

Perhaps this is the governor's way of suggesting we roll back the licensing protocols? We asked his office whether he would prefer to do away with the mental health screening or the fingerprint profiling. There has been no response, so we'll assume he's not done blaming others for his own failure yet, or for not recognizing that local PDs are routinely slow on the permit triggers. Only the governor can fix that.

Maybe he'll blame the Roberts Court next, for refusing to hear the case on carry permits a year ago. Maybe he'll blame the people of New Jersey, where the vast majority do not want this to be Georgia, a place they carry guns into churches and bars. Or maybe he's just trying to nail down the Survivalist vote, especially with the Zombie Apocalypse imminent.

Either way, the man who just three years ago said he was "committed to strictly enforcing New Jersey's strong gun laws" has decided it's no longer convenient. But then, perhaps you noticed that accountability has never been a strength.

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