Quote of the day–Daniel Schmutter

If it is lawful to possess a book in one’s home, does that mean it is lawful to read a book while sitting on one’s porch? How about in one’s backyard? These questions sound absurd, but they are precisely the questions New Jersey gun owners face every day because New Jersey gun law treats gun owners as criminals unless they can show that they are not.

New Jersey courts have made it clear that gun laws are to be interpreted and applied as unfavorably as possible against the gun owner. In a 1973 case, State v. Valentine, the court declared: “The overriding philosophy of our Legislature is to limit the use of guns as much as possible.”

Similarly, in a 1996 case, State v. Pelleteri, the court declared: “When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril.”

The New Jersey Legislature must face the reality that the gun owner and the book owner alike must be treated with equal constitutional dignity. After McDonald, we now see that the emperor has no clothes.

New Jersey gun law is upside down, and if the New Jersey Legislature does not fundamentally reform its scheme of regulating guns, the courts will likely do it for them.

Daniel Schmutter
July 30, 2010
Op-Ed: Throwing the book at gun laws
Schmutter is a litigation attorney at the firm of Farer Fersko in Westfield, focusing on
environmental, commercial real estate and business law. He represented Jews for
the Preservation of Firearms Ownership as amicus curiae before the U.S. Supreme
Court in both the Heller and McDonald cases and currently represents the
Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs in its challenge to New
Jersey’s one-gun-a-month law.
[And the reform cannot come any too soon. People are dying and being put in prison out there.

H/T to John Richardson.–Joe]

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6 thoughts on “Quote of the day–Daniel Schmutter

  1. Of course Mike, that’s all you’d bring to the party.

    Its not like you have an argument. Or capable of determining fact from fiction.

  2. New Jersey had a nice run of her crime rate since the pro-crime lobby starting getting their way in the mid-60s.

    He’s right, though, in that there is no comparison. Schmutter’s argument is, while legally appealing, pretty limp-wristed. The book is not a necessary item to defend life. The “gun-free zone”–essentially no deterrent to criminals–forces people to choose between succumbing to a potentially lethal attack from either criminals or police. One of those is an extension of a government that allegedly exists to protect our rights.

    To be a disarmer is to believe that, in the several seconds one might have to either escape or fight to survive, a defender must study court precedent while reading a map and a GPS, or strike up a conversion with a 911 operator–executing either without error while being beaten to death, in order to appease the rigid authoritarians who demand such performances (apparently) for their own entertainment, from behind the reinforced concrete walls of their air-conditioned taxpayer-funding fortresses, which are protected during normal operating hours at all times by armed guards.

    Disarmament really isn’t about safety–as evident from disarmer’s total ignorance of safe practices–and it isn’t about lowering crime, judging from actual crime statistics. It’s about submission to the state. If it was actually about disarmament, then agents of the state wouldn’t be prancing around with all the machineguns and destructive devices that they “banned” from possession by the general populace.

    Make with the groveling; it’s a religion after all.

  3. Should be “taxpayer-funded”, not “taxpayer-funding”. The original is still correct in some sense, what with all the voter bribing–sorry–“social programs” going on out there.

  4. Of course mikeb and anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the U.S. constitution knows that guns and books are both covered equally in the Bill of Rights. The comparison is immediately obvious to anyone, which is precisely why mikeb had to react– the truth must be answered with absurdity, you know, for “balance”.

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