Bryan Miller is a total ASSHAT. He just doesn't get it!!!

Activists: Violent crimes in New Jersey committed with out-of-state guns


By BONNIE PFISTER
Associated Press Writer

March 16, 2006, 7:10 PM EST


TRENTON, N.J. -- While some activists will gather this weekend to commemorate the loss of American lives in Iraq, others in New Jersey will be focusing on violence at home.

Members of the Million Mom March and CeasefireNJ will hold a rally in Trenton on Saturday, the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The antigun advocates' mission: to point out that while New Jersey has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, shooting deaths in its major cities surged last year.

 Activists say many of the weapons come here from out of state, including from across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. The rally will end with a march across the "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" bridge to Morrisville, Pa.

"We think that it's entirely appropriate that this rally and march will be across a bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, because it's across such bridges that guns come into our state that devastate our communities," said Bryan Miller, director of CeasefireNJ. "It's an easy trip across the river."

In recent years, Congress has restricted the amount of detail on gun tracing that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms may share with the public. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a Mercer County Democrat and prosecutor in Trenton Municipal Court, recently introduced legislation that would require the New Jersey attorney general to begin compiling that data.

A related bill by Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Randolph, cites ATF figures from 1992 to 1998 indicating that 80 percent of guns confiscated in crimes in the Garden State had been smuggled in from other states.

Prosecutors in Camden County said of the 252 guns used in crimes there in 2003-2004 that could be traced to their original point of sale, 36 percent came from Pennsylvania. About 14 percent came from the Garden State, with the balance coming from the Carolinas, Florida, Virginia and Georgia.

"The federal government has abdicated its responsibility in guns coming up through the border," Gusciora said Thursday. "New Jersey should at least track to find out which states these guns are coming from."

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman with the National Rifle Association, said while he hasn't seen Gusciora's legislation, efforts to focus on legal gun purchases are misplaced.

"A vast majority of firearms used in crime are obtained in the black market," Arulanandam said. "The key is to strictly prosecute anyone who breaks the law, especially firearms law. If there's anyone involved in illegal gun trade, prosecute them."

But Attorney General Zulima Farber's office says tracing gun origins is an important public policy effort. To that end, in an interview earlier this week Farber said state police have begun an initiative in Irvington and Camden to intensify investigations at crime scenes where a gun has been used.

__

Associated Press Writer Geoff Mulvihill in Mount Laurel contributed to this report.

___P>

On the Net:

Assembly Bill 2931: www.njleg.state.nj.us

CeasefireNJ: www.ceasefirenj.org

Million Mom March: www.millionmommarch.org

NJ Attorney General: www.nj.gov/lps/

Wouldn't it be something if the PA Hometown crew met them on the Morrisville side of the bridge with a bump-fire drill?

NJ gun phobia and restrictive gun laws moving across the river to PA...

It is not the people doing the crime it is the gun that made them do it!
Lets not concentrate on the criminal just the tool.

NO that would make sense!

Give me a break.

Going by their overall logic,
I have all the tools to be a rapist provided by GOD so I must be a rapist.
My "Johnson" made me do it!

Beware my PA brothers...
Mr. Miller and his cronies has his sites set on you and your state now.

RW3