Last month, New Jersey strengthened its criminal code by making illegal gun possession a second-degree crime instead of a third-degree offense. As a result, a person convicted of illegal firearm possession faces a maximum of five to 10 years in prison instead of a maximum of three to five years.
More importantly, prosecutors said, judges are more likely to incarcerate someone convicted of a second-degree crime than they would someone convicted of a third-degree crime. Because of that, they said they expect more people convicted of illegal firearms possession to be sent to prison.
That's "possession." So that would include anyone choosing to exercise the supposedly unalienable right to keep and bear arms, even (especially?) if it meant defying a tyrannical state edict.
Kind of like one of the extremists documented
here.
“It'll make sure that the punks caught with guns for the purpose of committing crimes end up behind bars,” Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi said after the news conference.
But unless you either catch them planning, in the act or after-the-fact, how do you know what someone's "purpose" for carrying a gun
is, Mr. Prosecutor? What if they just want to protect themselves--something you can't do for them--and their application for permission to do so has been
denied...?
If they do it anyway, will you still consider them "punks"?
