Trenton shooting puts Phil Murphy's gun law agenda in spotlight Also underscores neglect in capital city

Charles Stile | NorthJersey

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Raw video from scene of Trenton shooting Raw video clips from the scene of the Art All Night Festival shooting in Trenton on Sunday.

Four days earlier, Gov. Phil Murphy was celebrating a milestone in his promised crusade on gun violence, casting himself as a man of action and promising to export the get-tough New Jersey model to the rest of the country.

“It is great to be here with leaders who share the simple belief that smart, comprehensive and common-sense gun safety laws will do much more to keep our communities safe than the guns-on-every-street-corner and guns-in-every-classroom thinking of the gun lobby,” Murphy said during a bill-signing ceremony at Trenton’s justice complex.

But on Sunday, just about a quarter of a mile from where Murphy marked the bill signings, the menace of gun violence reared its head at an all-night arts festival, a flourishing annual event designed to breathe life back into a once-proud furnace of an industrial city.

Instead, the festival became a scene of death and heartbreak. And a shooting gallery. The mass shooting left the suspected gunman dead and 22 injured, and some in critical condition. Days earlier he was the cheerleader, but when Murphy visited the city hours after the killing he was the somber governor, sticking by his core agenda while offering solace to the victims.

"It is yet again another reminder of the senseless gun violence, even after having passed six stringent gun laws last week,’’ the governor said in a hallway of the Galilee Baptist Church, where the sound of gospel singing drifted from the sanctuary.

“We know we are getting stronger and better, but we are a long way from cracking the back of this,’’ he said.

Sunday's mass shooting in Trenton underlies the challenges Murphy faces as he casts himself as the gun control crusader, the first New Jersey governor to willingly adopt that since Democrat Jim Florio pushed through an assault weapons ban during his tumultuous first six months in office 28 years ago.

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VIDEO: Raw video from scene of Trenton shooting

On one hand, Murphy's aggressive compiling of a gun control résumé, like the signing of the six bills last week, allows him to make the credible claim that he has been at the forefront of reform, working in a proactive way, rather than being prodded by the inevitable crisis.

“Just like the opioid crisis that grips our state, the gun violence issue also grips our state,’’ Murphy said, drawing a distinction with his predecessor, Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who recast himself as an anti-opioid crusader in the final stage of his tenure.

And Murphy has ambitions to export the New Jersey model to other states with porous gun laws. In his first six months, he helped cobble together a multi-state compact to pass tougher and “common-sense” restrictions that the NRA-owned Congress refuses to pass.

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His administration is collecting statistics on out-of-state guns that have landed illegally in the hands of New Jersey offenders. Murphy promises to “name and shame” the states that have pumped guns through the “iron pipeline” into New Jersey.

Yet gun violence like Sunday’s — the result of some “neighborhood turf issue,’’ according to one Trenton city official — also allows critics to claim that new restrictions succeed in making it difficult for law-abiding citizens to defend and protect themselves while failing to keep them out of the hands of criminals.

They have already argued that the new bills — which call for lowering the capacity of ammunition magazines from 15 to 10 rounds, banning armor-piercing “cop-killing” bullets and tightening restrictions of background checks — would have not stopped the senseless carnage in Trenton.

The incident also underscores a broader social challenge for the liberal Murphy, who has vowed to build a “fairer and stronger” economy.

While New Jersey has one of the lower rates of gun violence in the country — and some of the strongest gun control laws — its aging cities have been plagued with gun-related crimes. Sunday’s shooting will only ratchet up pressure on Murphy to make his progressive agenda more an urban one.

“It is a wake-up call,’’ said Reed Gusciora, the Trenton mayor-elect who also attended Murphy’s news conference at the gun bill signing last Wednesday in his capacity as an assemblyman. “We need more ... resources. We’re not just any city. We’re the capital city.”

Gusciora noted that Trenton was virtually neglected and underfunded during the Republican Christie era. The $80 million state aid the city received from Gov. Jon S. Corizine’s administration was cut by a third under Christie and the city police force dropped from 400 members to 294, he said.

As of late Sunday, the shooting was under investigation, and there is no way to know yet what ignited it. But Gusciora said the city is in desperate need of beefed-up after-school and teen programs. It’s going to take a lot more of that kind of investment, not simply “prayers in churches.”

“Just changing laws is not going to change things,’’ said Jerrell Blakeley, an at-large Trenton councilman. “It’s got to be a whole battle of hearts and minds. And we are going to have to marshal all our resources.”

Murphy has marshaled the votes for the gun bills, which Christie vetoed despite strong Democratic support in the Legislature. Those bills essentially were waiting for his signature upon taking office in January.

But marshaling resources for his new state budget has been a far more complicated challenge. And adding money now to help troubled cities combat gun violence could be an even bigger lift for Murphy as his fellow Democrats push back on a series of tax hikes he has proposed. Perhaps now, the shooting has raised the stakes in that conversation.