New Jersey Gun Laws
Essay Preview: New Jersey Gun Laws
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New Jersey has decent laws for handheld firearms but they are not good enough. New Jersey is a extremely populated state. For such a small state with so many people, New Jersey needs strict firearm laws, to keep things safe. The problem of New Jersey’s unsafe handgun laws can be solved by more strict laws and tracking devices because many handguns are bought, used, sold, and transported illegally.
Of all firearms, citizens abuse the laws of handguns the most. When you hear or read on the news about a homicide or robbery case, most of the time the weapon used is a handgun. They are not very hard to purchase, they can be easily concealed, they are not hard to sell and buy illegally, and they are powerful for their size. This makes the handgun the most practical weapon for a person to use even if it is for illegal use. A handgun is a gun that can be fired with one hand and usually is semi-automatic. An example of a handgun is a pistol or a revolver.
Handguns laws are strict but they are not strict enough. To purchase a handgun, a permit is required. But no ID card is required, this makes it easy to fake an identity and purchase a handgun illegally. To acquire a permit you must get it through the New Jersey State Police. A flawless background of crimes, mental health, and drug dependency and a minimal age of 21 is needed to get the permit (NRA-ILA 2).
It is illegal to sell, give, transfer, assign, or otherwise dispose of, or receive, purchase, or otherwise acquire a handgun unless the purchaser, assignee, donee, receiver, or holder is licensed as a dealer under New Jersey law or has first secured a Permit to Purchase a handgun
(NRA-ILA 2). That law sounds good but still the majority of guns are sold, bought, transferred and acquired illegally.
When a handgun is bought from a legal seller, with a license from the state of New Jersey, it is not registered. This means the buyers information is not recorded with the gun purchase. Since the gun is not registered, it can easily be sold, or given away illegally. If a crime is made with a handgun, which they usually are, it is hard to find the owner of the gun because it is not registered.
Any citizen that meets the standards to receive a Firearms Purchaser Identification Card (FID), has no limit on how many handguns they are allowed to purchase (NRA-ILA 2). This can also lead to the illegal distribution of firearms. This is how black market handgun sellers make money and not get caught. Once a gun is bought it can be sold to several different people and nobody will know. The state has no idea about the guns where abouts and who has the gun. If a crime is committed with the handgun, the state can find the original owner, but this owner can easily say it was lost or stolen or make up another excuse. Handguns need a device that can track them down, and the state can easily find out who has them and where they are.
Handguns are also the most illegally used weapon because they can easily be hid and transported illegally. In New Jersey no handgun may be delivered to any person or place unless accompanied by a trigger lock or a locked case, gun box, container or other secure faculty (NRA-ILA 2). This law does little to prevent the illegal carrying and transporting of firearms. Handguns can easily be hid illegally on a citizen in public without anyone noticing.
This leads to a lot of crime, especially in a state like New Jersey. To carry a handgun you must also have a Permit to Carry, but even if you have a Permit to Carry and you are caught carrying the handgun you need a good reason to be carrying the gun. You can not be just carrying the gun with no purpose.
If handguns were only carried by police officers and other state and federal officers many crimes could be avoided, but hunters and hobbyists have good sound reasons for wanting to own a gun. And although it is unnecessary for any citizen to carry a handgun in public, people still do it.
Still, there are many ways to stop the illegal use of handguns. Civilians could only have handguns for collection/hobby purposes, exhibition or firing range shooting, or for household protection. If guns were bought for those reasons only (of course), many problems could be avoided.
Handguns are collected as a hobby. They are bought by civilians for collecting just as a child would buy baseball cards to collect, it’s a hobby. This is perfectly fine. Handguns purchased just for novelty and just to be shot properly at a firing range are also perfectly fine. Also, a handgun kept in a safe place in a house, to keep as protection only when a trespasser or intruder enters the house or property with means of harm, is also ok. If handguns were purchased just for those reasons and used properly and legally, the gun laws and guns themselves wouldn’t have to be altered,