New Jersey AG says he will defy Supreme Court ruling overturning ban on bump stocks

TRENTON, NJ - Just as Joe Biden has made a habit out of defying Supreme Court decisions, it appears New Jersey is about to follow suit. 

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a ban enacted during the Trump administration banning so-called “bump stocks” in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting that killed over 50 people, and wounded over 500. It was alleged that the gunman used a bump stock. The Court ruled that the bump stocks do not convert semi-automatic firearms into machine guns because they don’t meet the statutory requirement that one trigger pull fires multiple shots. 

That decision didn’t sit well with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat. It should be noted that Democrats have railed against former President Trump for criticizing judges, district attorneys, and attorneys general who have engaged in Soviet-style lawfare against him. Platkin slammed the high court’s decision, further proof that criticizing the courts is reserved for Democrats. 

“As the state’s chief law enforcement officer, I condemn today’s Supreme Court decision holding that bump stocks, which convert semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, are not federally regulated,” Platkin said, according to New Jersey 101.5. 

Platkin then wrote that New Jersey will defy the Supreme Court decision. 

“To be clear, bump stocks remain prohibited under New Jersey law, and this decision has no impact on our law, which I will continue to enforce to the fullest extent. There is no valid reason for any law-abiding citizen to own a device capable of causing extreme bloodshed.” 

Platkin then claimed without validation that “there have already been more than 200 mass shootings, and more than 14,000 people have been the victims of gun violence” so far in 2024. 

“The horrifying consequences of this ruling will be felt for decades to come.” 

Democrats have used the term “mass shooting” to attempt to turn even gang-related incidents into “mass shootings.” By their definition, every weekend night in Chicago sees a couple of “mass shootings.” 

The FBI defines an active shooter as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” The Department of Justice in 2013 defined mass shootings as “any incident in which at least four people are murdered with a gun.” 

The problem with defining mass shootings is because, according to a 2020 article from the National Institute of Justice Journal, there is a “lack of a single definition of the term ‘mass shooting.’” 

Moreover, they said research on the topic is “hampered by a lack of agreement on definitions of critical terms, such as ‘mass shootings’ and ‘mass murders,’ and by the absence of consistent sources of data on mass shootings.” 

They also noted that “the federal criminal code lacks a distinct mass shooting offense; this may help explain why researchers use different terminology, or types of criminal offense, in their analyses of the same phenomenon.” 

Or, in the case of Democrats, use that to gaslight the American people on the true number of “mass shootings.” 

Last week, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that the Trump administration erred in defining bump stocks as a machine gun because a bump stock doesn’t turn a semiautomatic firearm into a machine gun. Justice Samuel Alito said that bump stocks could become illegal if Congress passes a law explicitly banning them. 

Conservative justices raised questions (as Alito suggested) about why Congress has not acted to ban bump stocks, and also noted that the BATF had in the early 2000s declared bump stocks legal. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, clearly the dumbest Supreme Court justice, referred to the Vegas shooting in her dissent. 

“In murdering so many people so quickly, he did not rely on a quick trigger finger. Instead, he relied on bump stocks,” she said. The “wise Latina” still didn’t explain how that turned the weapon into a machine gun, defined as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically, more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” Even a bump stock requires manual pulling of the trigger for each shot, even though a bump stock makes it easier to do so. 

The Supreme Court decision is the latest victory for gun rights advocates. In 2022 in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the high court recognized a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self defense.

The bump stock case was filed by a Texas gun shop owner, military veteran and gun shop owner Michael Cargill, who was represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance. While his attorneys acknowledged that bump stocks allow for rapid fire, they do not rise to the level of machine guns. 

There were about 520,000 bump stocks in circulation when the ban went into effect in 2019, which required owners to either surrender or destroy them, at an estimated loss of $100 million, the plaintiffs said in a court document. It is likely many of those bump stocks were “lost” or “fell into a lake.” 

Remember Platkin's railing against SCOTUS the next time Republicans are accused of "attacking our sacred democracy" by criticizing judicial decisions made by Biden-appointed judges.