By David Codrea
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Bill Fitzpatrick said it was especially important to get assault weapons off the streets,” New Jersey 101.5 reported. They were covering a Camden, Newark and Trenton gun “buyback” hosted in a church/state partnership — something that’s evidently not objectionable when “progressive” virtues are signaled — that netted 4,775 guns.
Taking center stage for the cameras was Chris Christie-appointed Attorney General Christopher Porrino. He bragged about how many more guns were taken in this time than last – more than had been seized by law enforcement in a year. Left unsaid by the crowing police and politicos was how few of those guns were turned in by the criminal element causing the problems, or that no less an authority than the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice concluded:
“Buybacks are ineffective unless massive and coupled with a ban [and] In order to have an impact, large capacity magazine regulation needs to sharply curtail their availability to include restrictions on importation, manufacture, sale, and possession.”
So leave it to USA Fitzpatrick to support both, and to utter an asinine sound bite taken straight out of the Bloomberg playbook:
“Those are weapons of war, those are weapons designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.”
Right. Semi-autos. Tell me he doesn’t know the difference, or that he doesn’t understand that Founding intent, backed by precedent, confirms citizens were meant to keep and bear “ordinary military equipment” to be taken into “common defense” battles. That was the envisioned deterrent.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick has spent his entire professional career in public service, including 19 years as a federal prosecutor,” his DOJ bio page informs us. In other words, he’s been a career trough-feeder who either didn’t understand the oath of office he nonetheless freely swore to, or possibly did but just viewed it as a ceremonial formality that he’s free to ignore.
That page tells us Fitzpatrick’s “acting,” meaning he assumed the top slot in New Jersey following the forced resignation of former USA Paul Fishman after President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions took over. In his case (and in others’, as a recent War on Guns post shows), Sessions did not go deep enough.
The Trump administration, AG Sessions and Senate Republicans owe it to gun owners who put them in power to ensure their operatives understand a fundamental obligation is “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” That means they have a fundamental obligation to provide Bill of Rights protections against government infringements.
And that means there should be no room in the DOJ for legal meatheads that spout self-serving crap about “weapons of war” in order to get press and to advance their agendas and careers. Even if a preponderance of useful idiot New Jersey voters approve of being disarmed.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.