NJ Spotlight: The Christie anti-violence plan

I have a new piece up at NJ Spotlight on the governor’s anti-violence plan released Friday. The piece outlines the governor’s approach, which focuses only nominally on enhancing gun control, and gives both supporters and critics a chance to weigh in.

My own sense is that the critics are right — at least partially. There is much good in the plan — the increased penalties and new criminal statutes for gun-related crimes and the improvements in the background checks will help, as will the attention to mental-health issues. The emphasis on video games, however, is misplaced (and, despite the great focus he placed on it, rather minor).

The focus on the governor — and to an extent the more comprehensive Assembly package — obscures a very real point that the governor has been making. New Jersey’s gun laws had been the second toughest in the nation before the Sandy Hook massacre (we probably rank fifth or sixth now that Connecticut, New York and a few other states have changed their laws) and, yet, our urban areas continue to deal with gun violence. State-level laws are not going to fix this, despite the governor’s support for state’s rights during Friday’s press conference. There needs to be a national standard that prevents the sale of certain kinds of firearms and limits purchases, otherwise efforts to crack down on trafficking and to control the flow of guns into states like New Jersey will fail.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet