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The fatal stabbing of Carol Bowne by an ex-boyfriend, Michael Eitel, became the cause celebre for relaxing carry permit standards.

Chris Christie has been trying to emasculate New Jersey's gun laws since he started taking money from NRA lobbyists in 2013, because in their perverted world, the state with the sixth-lowest rate of gun deaths in the U.S. needs to be turned into the OK Corral.

Here's his latest gambit: If you believe you are facing a "serious threat," you can qualify for a handgun carry permit. If that sounds nebulous, that is the intention - which is why the governor's executive order deserves a legislative roadblock.

Christie asserts that this is about protecting victims like Carol Bowne, the Berlin Township woman who had to wait far too long to get her pistol permit, which might have allowed her to prevent that fatal stabbing by a boyfriend on her front lawn last June.

On that count, the governor is right: A woman has the right to protect herself with a gun against a violent partner. In Bowne's case, her permit wasn't processed in a timely manner. She also should have been eligible for a carry permit, because she wouldn't have been able to use her gun outside her home without one.

We want to believe the governor has good intentions here. But this is the man whose original motive to run for state office was to preserve a ban on assault weapons - only to deny it when he ran for national office.

So the new directive issued by his Attorney General regarding carry permits invites skepticism.

The law states that applicants must prove a "justifiable need" to carry a handgun, which is why so few carry permits are granted in New Jersey.

The directive would create a far more lenient standard: The applicant would no longer have to claim "specific" threats to prove that justifiable need. He or she would only have to identify "serious threats" that are "not directed specifically at an individual but which establish more than mere generalized fears or concerns."

That's flimsy. Anyone who lives in Camden or Paterson could claim a "serious threat" just by leaving the house.

The Legislature needs to stop this so-called reform, while still amending the regulations to protect potential victims like Bowne.

Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) plans to draft a bill that defines "justifiable need," which would preclude the proposed rule change, and inform the Attorney General that his regulation violates legislative intent.

"If these amendments are adopted," Weinberg said, "every cab driver or pizza delivery man who operates in a tough neighborhood would qualify for a carry permit."

But as the Senate looks at the broader definition of right-to-carry, it must recognize that the Bowne case was tragic template. "She had a specific threat, and under the law, that should grant her the right to carry," Weinberg agrees.

The Legislature must reconcile other grim realities along the way. For example, the FBI's most recent Uniform Crime Report said there were only 270 justifiable homicides committed by private citizens in 2013; and of those 270, only 23 involved women killing men. Of those 23, only 13 involved firearms.

That doesn't mean women who live in fear shouldn't qualify for an expedited carry permit after receiving state-mandated training. But it certainly shouldn't create a looser standard for everyone else, no matter how much it satisfies the agenda of the governor's political allies.

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