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

Gov. Chris Christie jokes with an audience member as he leaves the bar after the town hall meeting at Fury's Publick House in Dover, NH on Friday May 8, 2015. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

TRENTON — At a town hall style-meeting in New Hampshire last week, Gov. Chris Christie defended his gun rights record, hinting at stances he'd take should he run for president and telling a pro-gun crowd he's not to blame for New Jersey's tough weapons laws.

Answering a question by an audience member about why he hadn't done more as governor to support Second Amendment rights, the Republican governor cast him self as a victim of a gun-control obsessed, Democratic-controlled state legislature.

"I'm more playing defense on this than I'll ever be able to play offense," said Christie, who was given a "C" rating by the National Rifle Association at the time of his reelection in 2013.

"I can only do what they send to my desk," said Christie. "I can't take executive action to change those rules ... except to pardon folks and commute sentences in places where I believe that there's been a miscarriage."



Christie noted that he'd vetoed a bill that sought to reduce magazine capacity from 15 to 10 rounds, "because I think it had no relationship to public safety at all."

He also pointed to his March pardon of Shaneen Allen, a Pennsylvania woman who was arrested and charged with illegally transporting a handgun which Allen was legally authorized to carry her gun in her home state. Allen, he argued, "wasn't trying to violate the laws of my state."

He promised to use "the executive clemency authority I have to right wrongs that have been produced by laws that overreached" during his remaining years in office.

"The problem for me in my state is, we're getting gun laws that go in the other direction from our legislature," said Christie.

Even so, Christie has struggled with being persona non grata at the NRA, which snubbed him last month when it failed to invite him to address its Leadership Forum in Nashville, Tenn., a courtesy it extended to much of the rest of the expected 2016 GOP field.

Christie sought to typify up the zealous nature of the legislature by mentioning the 2002 Childproof Gun Law, signed by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey.

"We passed a law in New Jersey 14 years ago that says that all guns allowed to be sold in New Jersey would be 'smart' guns, that detect on the trigger, the fingerprint of the owner, so it can't be used by somebody else," said Christie.

"Well this technology doesn't exist," he said, to raucous laughter. "So that gives you the flavor of what I'm dealing with."

However, in mid-2013, German "smart" gun manufacturer Armatix had secured the federal permits needed to sell its .22 caliber smartgun, the iP1, in all 50 states, including New Jersey.

"The governor is wrong," said state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who sponsored the Childproof Handgun bill, which called for every gun sold in New Jersey have a mechanism to prevent unauthorized users from firing it three years after they are determined to available for retail use. It became law twelve years ago, not fourteen.

The iP1 is a "personalized" weapon that uses radio-frequency identification technology (RFID) to prevent it from being fired by anyone not wearing a special, passcode-protected wristwatch sold with it. Only when the watch's radio signal is recognized by a receiver inside the gun is its firing pin is unblocked, and the weapon able to be discharged.

But in December, Christie's acting attorney general, John Hoffman, ruled that a handgun designed to work only when paired with an accompanying RFID wristwatch was not a "personalized gun," and therefore not subject to the New Jersey state law.

Gov. Christie's Town Hall Meeting at Fury's Publick House 29 Gallery: Gov. Christie's Town Hall Meeting at Fury's Publick House

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

