NRA on defense after governor exposes its role in gun crime pipeline

By Oliver Willis - April 7, 2018

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed an order calling out NRA-lobbied states that have the most lax gun laws and contribute to gun crimes across state lines. And the radical gun group is already lashing out.

Recently elected New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is officially putting the NRA’s favorite states on notice. And he’s publicly highlighting those states’ roles in the spread of gun violence around the nation.

Murphy signed an executive order directing his state to release a report every three months listing the states that are the source of guns used in crimes in New Jersey.

At a news conference, Murphy was explicit about the aim of the order. “If it means naming and shaming other states, that’s exactly what we’re going do,” he declared.

He noted that in 80 percent of the 485 gun deaths in his state in 2016, the gun came from out of state.

New Jersey has some of the most stringent gun laws in America. But those laws have to live in coexistence with states where the NRA wields immense power.

“We cannot be blind to the fact that our gun laws are only as good as those in the states around us,” Murphy explained.

But the gun safety opponents are immediately lashing out in response to Murphy’s sensible measure.

The New Jersey Association of Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the state’s NRA affiliate, responded to the order in typically weak and callous fashion. The group accused Murphy of “propagandizing gun crime data” and claimed the reporting “would be entirely one-sided.”

The group also insisted that “hundreds of thousands of times each year nationwide … the mere presence of a legal firearm stops crime, often without a shot fired.”

But that does nothing to erase the death statistics cited by Murphy, a growing problem also faced by other states.

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