New Jersey AG Pushing Private Property Owners to Create More Gun-Free Zones

 

No matter what you’ve heard, here’s a fact: You CAN display signs prohibiting guns in and around your establishment. For those who wish to declare their property a “gun-free zone” by downloading a decal or requesting one for free, visit https://t.co/QftG2mU4W7. pic.twitter.com/8bkaxXddZH

— Attorney General Matt Platkin (@NewJerseyOAG) August 9, 2024

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin is doing his level-best convince inmates citizens of the Garden State that they really should think about making any private property they may own a “gun-free” zone. He and Governor Phil Murphy have been carrying on a post-Bruen campaign to get more New Jersey residents to tell the world that guns are prohibited on their property.

As New Jersey 101.5 reports . . .

Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin are urging New Jersey business owners to create thousands of new ‘gun free zones.’

Murphy and Platkin have been working hard to undermine the so-called Bruen decision that lifted most restrictions surrounding an individual’s right to carry a firearm.

That effort, though, was complicated earlier this month when a Fourth District Court judge — an Obama appointee, no less — issued an order enjoining the state from enforcing the part of its Bruen response law that designates all private property in the state a gun-free zone unless the property owner explicitly says otherwise.

New Jersey, of course, has it’s own “sensitive places” carry ban passed as part of its own Bruen response law. The kind of law that judges are chipping away at, like in Maryland. And much of New Jersey’s ban has been blocked by the courts, too.

All of this judicial pushback seems to have panicked Murphy and Platkin, so the AG issued the tweet above and announced on his website that everyone in New Jersey should . . .

It’s always been legal, of course, for private property owners to ban carry on their premises. That’s the law everywhere. So given the fate of the laws anti-gun states have passed in the wake of Bruen, Murphy and Platkin are now trying to use that to expand the number of no-go zones as much as they can through voluntary means.

Hence yesterday’s tweet.

But that, folks, is a sign of panic. The effects of the Bruen decision are being felt in more places and playing out in more courts…even those behind enemy lines. Petty authoritarians like Murphy and Platkin can see the judicial writing on the constitutional wall. More of the laws they’ve enacted — both before and after the Bruen decision was handed down — are under serious attack.

The District Court in Maryland also enjoined the state from banning carry in bars and within 1000 feet of demonstrations. Courts in more gun-friendly jurisdictions will likely do even additional damage to the edifice of gun control laws erected in various cities and states, likely setting up future situations in which the Supreme Court will once again have to weigh in.

Watch this space.