Quote of the Day
The most fundamental requirement for a legitimate legal regime is that a person must be able to know what the law requires before being held accountable to it. As a recent case out of New Jersey shows, however, the state’s oppressive laws for gun businesses no longer meet even this minimal threshold.
New Jersey arguably has the nation’s strictest gun control laws; it is difficult even for well-meaning people and businesses to thread their way through them to exercise their Second Amendment rights. On top of those laws, in 2022, the state enacted new requirements for each “gun industry member” to “establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products.” These “reasonable controls” are supposed to be geared toward preventing bad outcomes from the diversion and misuse of the industry member’s products by criminals.
Yet just what is expected, on top of the mountain of explicit requirements these businesses already face, is not explained. Gun industry members are supposed to figure that out for themselves. The price for guessing wrong, moreover, could be ruinous litigation from the state’s anti-gun office of the attorney general (AG).
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In resolving the case, in fact, the superior court washed its hands of trying to untangle what reasonable controls the law actually required of Butch’s Gun World in making the sales in question. Instead, it simply held that because the shop hadn’t imposed any additional measures (beyond following explicit statutory laws) in making the sales, the reasonable controls statute must have been violated in some fashion.
NRA-ILA
August 4, 2025
NRA-ILA | New Jersey Attorney General Platkin: Making Up Gun Control Laws as He Goes Along
You might ask, “Isn’t this unconstitutionally vague?” From the same article:
The court similarly washed its hands of the shop’s contention that the reasonable controls statute violated due process by not explaining its requirements: “This Court is not positioned to determine whether the statute is unconstitutionally vague and will not do so.”
There are some people that need to be prosecuted. This prosecutor and judge are on that list of people.
As I have said before, I won’t be going to New Jersey until they fix their laws, or I can get hunting tags.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be in the gun business in totalitarian states like NJ and MA and CA. The Barrett solution is the right one.
Why would this be surprising? You can be held legally liable and punished for laws that you DON’T EVEN KNOW EXIST…in EVERY state. So not understanding a law yet being liable is not a big stretch. Fundamentally, the REAL problem in America is we don’t tar and feather enough politicians, judges and bureaucrats.
Good point. Ayn Rand recognized this, and put the explanation into the words of one of her bad guy characters, Floyd Ferris.