A microcosm of the national gun debate is happening right here in the Garden State between gubernatorial nominees Phil Murphy and Kim Guadagno.
On the heels off the deadliest mass shooting in American history last month in Las Vegas, the debate over gun control has resurfaced yet again. A microcosm of that debate is happening right here in the Garden State, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy has campaigned on a platform of increased gun control, while his Republican opponent and current Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who says “New Jersey has among the strictest gun laws in the country,” has endorsed enforcing the laws the state already has on the books.
First, let’s take a look at Guadagno’s statement. Does New Jersey actually have some of the strictest gun laws in the country?
Organizations on both sides of the political spectrum seem to agree it does.
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence — a left-leaning policy organization whose mission is “to save lives from gun violence by shifting culture, changing policies, and challenging injustice” — gives New Jersey an “A-” as part of its 2016 gun law state scorecard, citing the state’s requiring of “the licensing of all firearms dealers and their employees, and requires a permit to purchase any handgun.”
Additionally, the right-wing Guns & Ammo magazine has ranked New Jersey 49th on its list of “best state for gun owners” in the country for various reasons, including the fact that “ownership of tactical rifles is tightly regulated in New Jersey, and state law bans suppressors,” among other reasons.
Guadagno thinks the state’s gun laws should be left alone, and to enforce what’s already there. Murphy would like to make some changes, including taxing gun sales to prevent violence, making it a crime to sell guns without conducting a mandatory background check and requiring individuals to register their firearms kept in the state, according to his campaign website.
Taxing gun sales
The Murphy campaign website states that “all gun sales should be subject to a tax that will fund law enforcement, drug treatment centers and mental health services” in an effort to “prevent violence.”
Something similar to this was passed by Seattle City Council in August 2015, when the West Coast city instituted a $25 tax on every gun purchase, along with a 2- or 5-cents-per-round tax on ammunition. Revenue-wise, the tax came up short.
“During its first year, the firearms and ammunition tax payments received by the city were less than $200,000,” Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess said in an email to the Seattle Times. Burgess, who proposed the tax, initially said it would draw between $300,000 and $500,000 in its first year.
However, according to Murphy, the point isn’t to raise revenue, it’s to “prevent violence.” Did the law at least do that? It’s complicated.
According to statistics from the FBI Crime Report released in September, the number of violent crimes in Seattle has increased from 4,093 to 4,294 between 2015 and 2016. The crime rate also went up during the same period from .0059 violent crimes per person to .0061 violent crimes per person. However, this was also true for the national trend. According to the same report, the 2016 estimate of violent crime increased 4.1 percent from the 2015 estimate for the nation as a whole.
Mandatory background checks
Do mandatory background checks reduce violence? A study conducted by Everytown for Gun Safety found states with mandatory background checks that go beyond the federal law’s requirements have 47 percent fewer women shot to death by intimate partners, 53 percent fewer law enforcement officers shot and killed in the line of duty, 47 percent fewer suicides by gun and 48 percent less gun trafficking in their cities.
However, there’s a catch. Politifact actually made this topic and the study’s figures the subject of its investigations, and experts the website talked to disputed the causation of the startling numbers.
“No reasonable person could believe that universal background checks could, all by themselves, cut these rates of gun violence in half,” Philip J. Cook, a professor of public policy studies at Duke University, told the website.
“Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said that without controlling for other factors, the data is insufficient for concluding a cause-and-effect relationship about background checks and a reduced gun violence,” the article added.
Mandatory registration
Most states don’t have any laws about registering firearms. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, only New York has laws on the books mandating the registration of handguns. Only Hawaii and the District of Columbia have laws mandating the registration of all guns.
Because of the small sample size, there’s no reliable data on its efficacy. However, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence says that “Firearm registration laws can lead to the identification and prosecution of violent criminals by helping law enforcement quickly and reliably ‘trace’ (identify the source of) firearms recovered from crime scenes.”
In the contrary, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action disagrees.
“Gun registration and gun owner licensing wouldn’t prevent or solve crimes. Most people sent to prison for gun crimes acquire guns from theft, the black market, or acquaintances,” it said. “Half of illegally trafficked firearms originate with straw purchasers who buy guns for criminals. Criminals wouldn’t register guns or get gun licenses.
