After String Of Legal Setbacks, New Jersey Lawmakers Weigh How To Proceed On Guns

On May 30, 1990, New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio signed a ban on assault weapons into law, making good on one of his campaign promises and giving New Jersey some of the strictest gun regulations in the country.

Thirty-six years later, that law has been left in tatters by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled last week that the Second Amendment disallows the state’s prohibitions on semi-automatic rifles and magazines with over 10 rounds of ammunition.

It was the latest in a long line of judicial decisions that have poked holes in New Jersey’s expansive gun laws, which had been held up by Democrats as evidence that stricter regulations lead to lower rates of gun violence. Now, facing a federal judiciary that’s likely to scrutinize everything they do, the state’s Democratic leaders are confronted with a difficult choice on how to proceed.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who won the governor’s office last November with a campaign promise to protect and expand the state’s firearm restrictions, said on Monday that she thinks New Jersey should continue putting forward new laws even at the risk of getting slapped down by the courts yet again.

“When it comes to protecting our kids, yeah, I’m going to keep testing the courts, because this is wrong,” Sherrill said. “We should be held up as a model, not attacked by the federal government and Trump’s handpicked court.”

What that might look like, though, is less clear. Spokespeople for legislative leaders in the state Assembly and Senate both said that Democrats are considering paths forward without offering any specifics: “The Senate is reviewing the court’s decision and evaluating all available legislative and legal options to preserve effective, commonsense gun safety measures,” a Senate Democratic spokesperson said.

Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald has a more concrete proposal: his long-languishing bill to mandate gun owners store their firearms unloaded and locked inside their homes – or face stiff penalties. That bill, A3560, has been floating around the statehouse since 2021 but has never reached a full floor vote.

Greenwald told POLITICO the bill was “the next thing I’m looking to do” on gun safety.

“The major cause of injury in someone’s home is through a gun that is stored improperly,” he said.

Part of the problem facing Democrats is that many of the regulations they and their voters most want to implement, like assault weapons bans and concealed carry restrictions, are ones that have already been implemented and subsequently struck down in court. Several other legislative Democrats who spoke with POLITICO indicated interest in pursuing new gun laws but uncertainty about what the courts would allow.

“What the Legislature can do given this ruling, that’s unclear — and needs to be worked through,” said Democratic state Sen. Andrew Zwicker. “When you have a federal ruling, you have to look at what’s in the state purview.”

And anything Democrats pass to change the new legal status quo is likely going to draw lawsuits from the same coalition of gun rights groups that have successfully stymied prior gun control efforts, potentially sending them back to square one.

Brian Bergen, a Republican assemblymember who has clashed with Democrats during prior gun control debates, said he’s concerned that the 3rd Circuit ruling will unleash a new wave of Democratic bills that may not withstand legal scrutiny.

“We’re constantly wasting time, energy, money focused on things that are settled business,” Bergen said. “The ruling happened, it’s the ruling. They can challenge it. But what I don’t want to see them do is throw all kinds of bills against the wall to see what sticks.”

Whatever the Legislature chooses to do, it’s not likely to do it anytime soon. July 1 marked the beginning of Trenton’s summer break, with legislators not set to return until September at the earliest — and even then, it typically takes several months for any new policy push to gain momentum.

As for a potential appeal, Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a statement shortly after the ruling was released that her office was “considering [its] options” about how to proceed. A spokesperson said that the office had no further news on what that might look like.

The U.S. Supreme Court, though, is already likely to review the constitutionality of assault weapons bans this fall. At the end of the court’s most recent term, the justices announced that they would hear challenges to similar bans in Connecticut and Illinois, paving the way for a nationwide legal standard to be set in the coming year.

In New Jersey, the battle over gun laws is one that has periodically captivated state politics dating back to the Florio era, when the National Rifle Association made unseating the governor who signed an assault weapons ban its number-one priority. (Florio lost to Republican Christine Todd Whitman by fewer than 30,000 votes in 1993 after a concerted NRA campaign against him.)

“If you are not going to get leadership out of Washington,” Florio said shortly before approving the ban, “you will have to get leadership out of the statehouses.”

During Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s administration, Democrats in the Legislature would frequently send gun control bills to the governor’s desk only to get a veto in return. Phil Murphy, Christie’s Democratic successor, spent his first year in office signing many of those previously vetoed bills into law — among them the magazine limitations that the 3rd Circuit just threw out.

The U.S. Supreme Court threw a curveball in 2022, nixing concealed carry laws in New Jersey and around the country in the landmark decision New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. Legislative Democrats leapt into action to reconstruct the state’s old concealed carry limitations under a new framework; the result, after months of wrangling, was a wide-ranging law that curtailed where firearms can be brought and implemented liability insurance requirements for gun owners.

That bill remains in legal limbo, however, after drawing a challenge from gun-rights groups. Last fall, a three-judge 3rd Circuit panel upheld most of the law’s core components, but it’s still subject to review by the entire 14-judge circuit, which leans more conservative. The insurance mandate remains unenforced, having been blocked by the courts shortly after the law was enacted.

In the wake of last week’s assault weapons ruling, Democrats have a similar desire to maneuver around an unfavorable legal precedent and put newly reworked restrictions in place, though they don’t yet know what that will look like. The risk, of course, is yet another ruling against them; Loretta Weinberg, a former state Senate Democratic majority leader who doggedly pushed for gun control laws during her three decades in the Legislature, said it’s a risk worth taking.

“There’s always something left to do — a new twist on the legislation, then let the courts weigh in,” Weinberg said. “I don’t think the Legislature should be willing to give up the battle to make it safer to live in New Jersey.”